


Within Her Embrace

by Serie11



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Aloy takes everyone by storm, Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, BAMF Aloy, Canon-Typical Violence, Demigod Aloy, Demigods, Eventual Romance, F/F, Female-Centric, Femslash, Gen, Girls rule the world, Magic, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Plot, Politics, Slow Burn, Talking Animals
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-30 01:18:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14485644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serie11/pseuds/Serie11
Summary: As a young demigod, a daughter of Gaia, Aloy is at risk from the people who would manipulate her towards their own ends, the gods who view her as a dangerous nuisance, and the monsters who want to kill her. However after eighteen years of being exiled in the Nora lands, Aloy is hungry to explore – even if it is against her mother’s wish to keep her far away from the Carja lands of conflict.But when Rost disappears, Aloy is forced beyond the Nora valleys for the first time. Thrust into a whirlwind of politics in the Carja capital while dealing with enraged and corrupted monsters throughout the lands means that she has little time to try to develop a relationship with either her human or godly parent. With the earthly realm in increasing turmoil, Aloy must solve the question of why the gods are imbalanced and the riddle of her birth, before chaos overtakes both the heavens and the earth – for there are forces stirring that are beyond the scope of even the gods' ability to put down, and for some reason Aloy is at the centre of it all...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hope yall are ready for this ride because I've got this whole baby already planned out!!

Aloy sinks lower on her favourite branch and stares down the winding path that leads towards the cabin that she and Rost live in. The spot is familiar – she’d encouraged the tree to grow a wide net of small branches here, and had intertwined them and made them grow thicker so that there was a place for her to sit, sometimes for hours.

She spends a lot of time in the tree.

Dangling her feet over the edge, she sighs. She doesn’t need to wait here, if she wants to. She could go and fish, or do some carving, or tend to her orchard, or do some of the other chores that Rost is always nagging her about. It’s nearing winter, and she’s worried about some of the smaller saplings that had only sprouted this summer. But she’s sitting in the tree.

Waiting.

Rost said that he would be back three hours ago, but he still hasn’t appeared. Aloy can count the times where he had been late on one hand, with fingers to spare. It just isn’t in his nature to say something and then not follow through on it.

Down the path, she can just see the walls of Mother’s Heart. They live on a small ridge, overlooking a valley. Inside the valley are several small settlements, all of which generally refer to Mother’s Heart for governance. Aloy has been to a few of the villages, but only briefly. Rost had promised her mother that he would keep Aloy away from prying eyes, and like his punctuality, he rarely says something he doesn’t mean. Even so, Aloy knows several people in the valley, and all of them probably know her. The Nora are a bunch of gossips, but she can’t exactly blame them – it isn’t like there’s much happening in the valley nowadays, what with the Red Raids finished two years ago now.

Aloy slides off her branch and paces for a few steps on the path before jogging towards their cabin. She’ll just fetch her bow. And her traveling gear. And everything she needs to be self-sufficient away from the cabin. And if she manages to find Rost and he asks her about it – well, she can always say that she’s prepared. He always likes it when she’s prepared.

* * *

 

Aloy hadn’t always been so at peace with her life in solitude with Rost. When she was younger, she had pestered him with so many questions, about life outside the valley, about Meridian and her mother. She would ask who her real father was, why she was hidden away and why her mother never visited. Rost had always done as best he could, though he always dodged questions about her father.

When Aloy had first bent a tree to her will, she had begun to suspect. Rost taught her everything, including the worship of the gods. He and Elisabet worshipped the All-Mother, Gaia. But Aloy is aware of the other gods as well – Zeus and Poseidon, Hermes, Aphrodite, Artemis and more. Their followers are rash and bright, because their patrons are in powerful and in charge of the godly realm. Gaia is the mother of those gods, and her time is over. But still, Rost believes that sometimes she can make her will felt on Earth. But when Aloy had asked her mother in one of her rare letters, Elisabet had told her that Gaia is sleeping, and that she never expects an answer to her prayers, or a miracle like other gods sometimes perform. Elisabet said that this means that the followers of Gaia are truly faithful – they know that there will be no answer to their prayers, even if Gaia is listening.

But then Aloy had made a tree grow in a way that she wanted.

It hadn’t happened immediately. She’d come back the next day after looking at a particular branch and thinking that it could bend in a particular way to get more light. And when she’d been passing by again, the branch had moved, exactly as she’d envisioned it.

She’d almost convinced herself that she was imagining it, except it kept happening. She’d think that the bramble bushes near the creek should make a space for them to gather the daily water more easily, and they had. She’d constructed the tree that overlooked the path coming from the valley. Her orchard flourished easily, and bore more than enough fruit for them to eat and trade to the other settlements in the valley for anything else they needed – and the fruit grew outside of the seasons that it truly should. She can convince the birds to avoid her trees, too.

These are not the abilities of a normal human.

Rost never said anything as she extended her abilities to control plants and animals, but she still remembers when one day he had come out of their cabin to find her covered in birds and squirrels that had fled at his approach.

“Aloy,” Rost had said heavily. “Come inside.”

She’d only been fifteen, and had done her chores for the day. She didn’t have any human friends that she talked to regularly, so the small animals around their cabin _were_ her friends. She’d been annoyed, and young enough to flash it at Rost.

“I don’t want to,” she had pouted. “ _You_ go inside, so I can call everyone back.”

Rost came to crouch by her side. She looked away from the compassion in his eyes. “Aloy, you should not talk to animals like that. We can pass your orchard off as good growing conditions, but no one will see what I just saw and think that…” He pursed his lips.

“That I’m entirely human?” Aloy had said rebelliously, teenage spirit in her chest. “That I’m normal, and not a mistake that my mother hid away?”

“Elisabet gave you to me for your own good,” Rost said gently.

“That’s a lie,” Aloy said, setting her shoulders. “I would have been much better if I lived with you _and_ her. She sent me away, so she doesn’t really want me.”

“You know that’s not true,” Rost said gently, but Aloy scowled at him and gone to stomp around the valley for a few hours.

Hidden away in the country of Nora, Aloy had grown up mostly isolated. When she was younger she had fought viciously against Rost to interact with some of the Nora in the nearby villages, but he had always refused. When she had started growing plants at ten, she had understood.

She isn’t the daughter of a high priest and some man. She is the daughter of a high priest and a _god_.

Elisabet’s reason for hiding her away had become clearer as she grew up. Demigods are coveted by almost every society – their strength and prowess from their godly heritage, able to be used for a king’s purpose. Rost told her that the only people who know of her other parent were himself and Elisabet.

Since knowing the reason why she wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone, Aloy actually had met some of the Nora, but she only calls one a friend. That’s who she goes to as night falls over the valley, and Rost still hasn’t returned to the cabin.

Mother’s Heart is bright and loud in a way that Aloy can’t be comfortable with. It’s just a normal night, not even a festival night, and that makes her more uneasy. How can they live like this?

She sidles into the village slowly, sticking to the edges of roads in order to keep out of everyone’s way. She nods to the few people she recognises, but no one tries to come and talk to her. Normally that would annoy her, but she’s here for a reason tonight, and she doesn’t need to be distracted. She has to find Teb.

He’s not in his usual merchant’s position, but that doesn’t surprise her much – after all, this isn’t a trading day, where people from all over the valley would come to Mother’s Heart. This is just a normal night, so he’s probably at his cabin. Now she just needs to remember which one that is…

She sees Teb’s mother coming out of one cabin and quickly hurries over to it. She’s carrying a basket filled with clothes and smiles when she sees Aloy.

“Oh, Aloy dear, how are you?”

“Good, good,” Aloy said.

“It’s unusual to see you in town without a market fair,” she points out. “Coming to visit my Teb, are you?”

Aloy nods, but looks down at her feet so she won’t have to look Teb’s mother in the eyes. Symara’s voice is cool and the way her fists are clenches shows Aloy that she doesn’t particularly care for the fact that Aloy seeks out Teb every time she comes into Mother’s Heart.

“He’s inside,” she finally says. “Please don’t stay too long.”

Aloy nods jerkily and pushes past her. It’s not Aloy’s fault that she lives in isolation with Rost. She didn’t choose to get sent away from a city and not even live in a village with other people.

She clenches her fist and then knocks on the door of the lodge. Teb’s uncle opens it, a gruff hunter that Aloy has seen around the valley many times.

“Teb!” he hollers into the lodge. “You’ve got a visitor!”

Aloy waits outside and tries not to feel like they don’t want her inside the lodge (which they don’t). Teb comes out of the door and almost trips over his own feet. Aloy grabs the back of his shirt and hauls him upright. Teb comes up grinning sheepishly.

“Aloy! Hey, I wasn’t expecting you. The armour you wanted isn’t ready yet, sorry –”

“I’m not here for that,” Aloy says, slightly exasperated. “I know you said a quarter moon of time. I just wanted to know if you’ve seen Rost.”

“Rost?” Teb looks at her, puzzled. “Well, he was at the market fair with you on the new moon. I haven’t seen him since then.”

Aloy stares at him, throat thick.

“Is he okay? Why are you asking?”

“He said that he would be back at the cabin before midday today but he never came back,” she manages to say. “I waited until sundown but there was still no sign of him.”

Teb’s face grows dark. “That’s not good news.” He looks over his shoulder, back into the cabin. “Let me ask my family.”

“Okay,” Aloy says, feeling helpless as he turns and goes back inside. Aloy looks up to the sliver of the moon in the sky and bows her head. She can only pray that Rost is somewhere under its light, safe.

Teb comes out after a few minutes, and Aloy can already tell by his face that no one has seen Rost. She bites her lip in frustration, and also to try to stop her eyes from welling up. Where could he be? Is he in a ditch somewhere with a broken leg, in the wilderness where no one can hear him? Did he slip and fall into the river? The Embrace is a huge piece of land, and if he’s unconscious there’s no way Aloy can search it all by herself.

“My uncle said that he will get word out to everyone tonight, and tomorrow everyone will be on the lookout for him,” Teb says grimly. He doesn’t add that they will be looking for Rost’s body. “Go back to your cabin, Aloy. He might still come home.”

It’s an empty promise, but Aloy supposes that there’s nothing else that Teb can say.

“Thank you Teb.” Aloy smiles at him, but it probably looks more like a grimace by Teb’s returning expression.

She can feel Teb’s eyes on her back as she heads down the road towards the gate. She will return to the cabin – but only because it’s where she saw Rost last. From there, she can track him back into the valley.

* * *

 

Rost isn’t at the cabin even when Aloy searches it from top to bottom. Beaky, the owl that lives in the tall tree next to the cabin that Aloy named when she was eight, hoots down at her questioningly as she begins to wander around the front of the clearing. She has to be in a certain state of mind before she can track anything.

“Have you seen Rost?” she asks Beaky. It’s not an empty question – Aloy has been talking and controlling most animals since she was young, and Beaky grew up in the tree next to the house. He’s been with Aloy for the longest, even though all that exposure has done nothing for his intelligence.

“Who, who,” Beaky says. Aloy paces in frustration because that could mean anything. Just because the animals understand her doesn’t mean she understands them.

“Can you take me to Rost?” she tries again. 

Beaky does a low circle over the cabin and then sits in his tree again.

So Beaky doesn’t know either. Aloy wants to rip her hair out in frustration but she settles for stomping her foot hard against the floor.

Reluctantly, she cleans up the front of the cabin and makes sure all the windows are securely tightened and won’t open even if a gale blows through. She goes through her pack and updates, cleans, and fixes everything. She crafts another dozen arrows for her longbow and two dozen for her shortbow. She fiddles with the tripwire ammo that Karst had sold her last week and manages to make another few lines of that. There’s probably enough space in her inventory for another weapon but she doesn’t want to take any of Rost’s bows. So instead she drags Rost’s meat drying rack inside and shoves all the boar that was on it inside her pack.

With everything outside the cabin stored inside and the entire cabin tightly shut up, Aloy finally makes herself go and stand by the trail and look down into the valley. Mother’s Heart is dark. There’s no movement on the path that could be Rost.

Aloy goes inside the cabin to go try and get some sleep. She closes the door behind her, cutting off Beaky’s goodnight hoot. Her corner still has her blankets so she rucks them up around her and settles in, even though she doesn’t feel tired at all.

When the sun rises in the morning Aloy takes a bracing dip in the pool of mountain water that’s just behind the cabin. It clears her mind, and leaves her shivering but ready to face the day. She’s already packed everything that she needs, so it’s easy to buckle up her pack and sling it so it lays over the small of her back, under where she shoulders her bow.

She shuts the door to the cabin firmly and tries not to feel like this is the last time she’ll be here for a long time.

There’s a soft hoot from the tree.

“I’m going looking for Rost,” she tells Beaky. He doesn’t move beyond staring at her. “I don’t know how long I’ll be away from here, so… No more treats from me for a while, okay?”

Beaky ruffles his feathers. Aloy shakes her head and turns towards the path.

Aloy has her own ideas as to where Rost might be. She picks up his footsteps as they lead away from their cabin, but loses them quickly in the lush grass of the Embrace. She hadn’t expected to find him that way, anyway. Rost would have known better than to leave marks that would last for so long. He’s too good of a woodsman for that.

She heads down the slope, away from the cabin and Mother’s Heart. There’s a particular hill that Rost likes to hunt on, so she’ll check that first. It’s somewhere to go, someplace to start. She’s burning up in her frustration right now, and she channels that into her legs and sets a fast pace.

The sun is high in the sky before she has to stop. Ducking into some long grass, Aloy narrows her eyes as she takes stock of the situation in front of her.

A troll is dragging an unidentifiable body across a clearing, probably heading toward its den to devour it. She doesn’t look at it any longer than to identify that it isn’t human. Aloy’s bow is gripped in her hand before she knows it, arrows in place.

This is something that Rost never approved of, either: hunting monsters. But it’s a burn in her blood, and Aloy can no more deny it than she can stop the sun from moving across the sky. Everything has its cycle. Monsters hunt humans – demigods hunt monsters. And humans take advantage of demigods. And the world spins on.

Aloy shakes her head, trying to dislodge her thoughts. Now isn’t the time for it. Not when the troll is almost to the trees on the other side of the clearing.

She raises her bow and aims. It’s her sharpshot bow, so it’s easy to know that the arrow can reach that far. Aloy breathes out and flexes her back to release the arrow. It soars and lands true in the troll’s back.

The troll lumbers around, dropping the carcass. Aloy ducks into the grass and carefully loads another arrow. Trolls have a good sense of smell – she won’t be hidden for much longer. Long enough for one more shot.

As the troll trundles closer, she aims again, this time being much more careful about it. Just as its beady little eyes focus on her patch of grass, she releases her arrow. It lands directly in its eye, and the troll staggers for a few steps before falling to its knees. Aloy watches in disgust as its form begins to melt into the strange dust that monsters leave behind. After a few seconds, the only thing left is a pile of dust and one finger: the trophy.

Aloy leaves the trophy and skirts the edge of the clearing so she won’t have to go near the carcass. It’s strange to see a troll this close to a town, and a small frown makes its way over her face as she continues on her way. There have been more monsters than usual over the last few years. She can’t really remember how things were when she was younger, because Rost always made sure that he accompanied her on any hunts they did, but the townspeople have been talking about it in low whispers for a while now. Apparently it’s worse north and to the west, if the Carja traders are to be believed. It’s unsettling, but Aloy can’t exactly do much about it besides killing the ones that she comes across. As if she wasn’t going to do that anyway.

She comes across a small pack of goblins and kills four of them before the remaining three can fall on her. She finishes them off at close range with her spear, thankful that there was only seven. She also sees a few pixies, although they fly off before she can do anything about them.

It’s far too much supernatural activity for this part of the valley. Aloy’s heart sinks when she spots two gremlins and downs them both before they realise she’s here. She hasn’t even gotten to Rost’s favourite hunting slope. There’s no way that he didn’t come across these beings if he came through here.

While Aloy had no trouble killing the monsters, she knows that it’s a different story for normal humans. Rost doesn’t have a drop of godly blood in him. If he wants to kill a monster, he either needs to enlist the help of a demigod like Aloy, or needs to find a blessed weapon to work with. Rost doesn’t have a blessed weapon, but he’s canny and clever, and has been avoiding and tricking the inhabitants of this valley for far longer than Aloy has been alive. She seriously doubts that any monster is the reason behind his disappearance, but the sheer number of them that she has come across is sending icy trickles of doubt down her spine.

 _If_ Rost has been taken by a monster, well – there would be no trace of him left. But Aloy refuses to think that it’s even a possibility. It’s a baffling thought in her otherwise steady mind.

When she comes across a pair of centaurs, she fully realises the strangeness of the situation. She’s never seen any centaurs before. Rost has told her about them, but she knows they prefer to roam the wide plains that are to the south of Carja lands. She can’t fathom a reason why they would be here.

But perhaps they would have answers for her. Centaurs are the rare sort of monster that is capable of higher thinking and have communities of their own. If she approaches in good faith, they probably won’t trample her to death.

So she lets out a whistle and comes out of the shelter of the trees, bow firmly on her back, and hands in front of her to show that she isn’t holding any weapons. The centaur on the left has a dapple grey coat and snorts, stamping his hoof at her appearance. The other, a calm brown with bright black eyes, stares Aloy down menacingly.

“Come no further, godly spawn,” the brown centaur says. Her eyes are hard. Aloy swallows. So Rost was right – centaurs can tell demigods from a distance.

“I’m looking for information about a man. I’m willing to trade information about this land, if you desire it.”

“We keep no knowledge of any man,” the centaur says, voice stiff.

“He would have smelled like me.”

“We have seen none of your kind in days,” the dapple grey says.

Gritting her teeth, Aloy tries not to let her frustration show. “Why are you this far south?”

The dapple grey stamps his hooves. The brown paws the ground. “Things are stirring, godly spawn. The west lands are no longer safe for either of our kinds. The gods are restless. Corruption threads through these lands. Darkness is afoot.” She shakes her head and they both canter away, further east.

Aloy stares after them. That was annoyingly vague and also threatening. Exactly what Rost had told her centaurs are like. Great.

But he had also told her that centaurs never outright tell a lie. If they say that they hadn’t seen any humans in the last few days, then they’re telling the truth. She doesn’t know what to make of the rest of what the brown had said. Danger, and that the gods are agitated.

Aloy wonders if that’s why she’s been so restless lately. She’s been snappy with Rost, who had told her that she’s annoying him with her teenage angst. But this is something else, she’s sure of it. Something in her blood is humming uncomfortably.

It wants to go west.

She turns further east instead. After another hour of hiking, she reaches the hill that Rost likes to hunt on. It’s bare and empty – there aren’t even any turkeys or boars or rabbits around. Aloy wonders if they’ve all been eaten by the monsters that are suddenly so prevalent. She pokes around for a bit, but she can’t find anything that indicates that Rost had been here.

Anger and hurt bubbles up in her throat and she chokes it down. Breaking down here would serve no purpose. Instead, she closes her eyes. Mother’s Crown is only a few hours hike away, and is the nearest Nora settlement. It’s the closest place for her to bed down for the night. Normally she doesn’t mind sleeping out under the stars, but monsters are more active at night, and with all the activity that she’s seen today, she doesn’t want to get attacked by a horde of goblins while sleeping.

So she turns around and pretends that she’s heading towards Carja lands. She wonders if she’s imagining the calming of the song in her blood, calling her west.


	2. Chapter 2

Aloy has never been to Mother’s Crown before. Technically it’s outside of the Embrace – the few valleys that Rost has always allowed her to roam freely in. She can see sentries in the watchtowers and the walls look the same as other Nora towns, so it’s not completely foreign. By the time she gets there, there’s only the hint of the sun in the sky, and she can already see the stars. She hopes that someone will put her up for the night – but even if she has to sleep by a fire outside, it will be a lot safer than camping outside the walls.

Teb has mentioned some people that he knows who live in Mother’s Crown, so hopefully she can trust in his judgement and seek them out. If she claims to come from inside the Embrace, it will probably take the Nora about two seconds to figure out who she is – there isn’t exactly a lot of exciting things happening in Nora lands, so small town gossip means that everyone knows everything about everyone. At least that will mean that they’ll trust her – the Nora are notoriously suspicious of strangers.

There’s a man standing outside the entrance to the town, and he steps in front of Aloy when she tries to enter.

“Only Nora are allowed inside,” he says roughly, lip lifting in the beginnings of a sneer.

“I’m a Nora,” Aloy says, planting her feet and resisting the urge to reach for her bow.

“You have no Mother’s Mark,” the man sniffs. Aloy resists the urge to flinch. The lack of blue paint on her face is just another way for the Nora to single her out – to show that she has no maternal connection to them. She’d once begged Rost to paint his own mark on her face, but he had told her that it wouldn’t be right – Mother’s Marks were passed down through the mother. So Rost had refused to give her his.

“I _am_ a Nora,” Aloy repeats, as calmly as she can manage. It doesn’t sound very calm, but it’s the best she can do under the circumstances, so she gives herself a pass. _(Why had Elisabet sent her so far away? Why couldn’t she have been hidden closer to Meridian?)_ She’s stressed and tired and bloody and dirty and she just wants to know if anyone has seen Rost.

“What’s going on here?” a new voice calls.

Aloy flicks her eyes over the man’s shoulder to see a younger man coming towards them. He’s probably only a few years older than Aloy is, but she can see authority etched into the lines of his shoulders.

“An outsider wants access,” the guard huffs.

The younger man looks her over.

“I live in the Embrace,” Aloy says, frustrated. “I’m looking for a girl, the apprentice of the healer. My friend Teb says she lives here.”

“What business do you have with her?” The younger man raises an eyebrow.

Aloy grits her teeth but then sighs, Rost’s disappearance rising to the forefront of her thoughts.

“My father, Rost, is missing,” she said tightly. “I want to know if he’s been seen by anyone here.”

“Then you would be wiser to talk to me,” the man says. He holds out his hand, and Aloy grasps his wrist in the Nora fashion of granting another the use of their Mother Name – the second gift their mother had given them, after their life. “My name is Varl.”

“Aloy,” Aloy says.

“But –!”

“Please let me deal with this, Resh,” Varl says calmly, levelling Resh with a flat stare. Resh gnashes his teeth but steps back to where he was posted at the gate of the village. “Aloy, please come with me.”

Aloy follows him gratefully into the village. Around them, Nora bustle this way and that, intent on their business. As they pass, Aloy feels their stares on the back of her neck.

“My apologies for Resh,” Varl says, voice low and soft. Aloy can’t help but feel reassured by it. It’s a strong voice. “He is a stickler for the rules.”

“I’m surprised that he let you talk to him like that,” Aloy says cautiously, fishing for more information.

“While my mother is away I hold her rank,” Varl explains. “And since she’s the Nora War-Chief, Resh has no choice but to obey me. He sure won’t be happy about it though – I know he’ll bring it up at the next full moon meeting, but my mother will be back by then, and she’ll cut him to size.”

“Why did you let me in?” Aloy has to ask. “Truly, I’m not one of the Nora.”

Varl shoots her a look. “I know that your presence is accepted by the Matriarchs, and you’re allowed inside other settlements inside the Embrace, aren’t you?” Aloy nods after a second. “Well, that means that you’re Nora to me. There must be a reason you don’t have a Mother’s Mark – but it’s hardly my place to pry into your business.”

“Thank you,” Aloy murmurs. “So, do you have any information about Rost? He’s been missing for several days now.”

Varl’s mouth tightens. “I heard rumours that he was missing. Unfortunately my mother had already left with a scouting party of braves before the news came in, so she will not be looking for him. With less people here, I haven’t exactly been able to ask anyone to search, either. You can ask around if you want, but everyone knows that he’s missing. If anyone had seen any sign of him, then they would have told the rest of the village. I’m sorry, Aloy.”

Aloy has to stop in the middle of the path and close her eyes, because her heart has just clenched hard in her chest. She hadn’t exactly expected news when she came here. She’d hoped, but she hadn’t expected. Varl’s steady words have just sieved away what hope she had.

_What is she meant to do now?_

Varl must sense her turmoil, because when she opens her eyes he’s standing in front of her, eyes dark and compassionate.

“Thank you,” Aloy finally says, her voice cracking. “For trying to look.”

Varl shakes his head. “I haven’t done anything.” Aloy meets his eyes. “And I haven’t done everything that I could have.”

Aloy seizes on that. “What haven’t you done?”

Varl eyes her shrewdly. “A few months ago, a higher troll moved into the north ruins. He hasn’t made trouble for us – you know that the Nora avoid the ruins mostly, anyway. There’s a bandit camp hiding out in the north part of it as well, which means that no one even goes near there if they have another option. The troll is content to rebuild the ruins into a place for himself. But in the few encounters that I have heard of, he apparently has a seer stone, and knows how to use it. If you confront him, and make him use the stone, then you might be able to see where Rost is.”

Blood pounding in her ears, Aloy settles her weight between her feet. She stares Varl down. “Tell me more about the troll.”

Varl sighs. “I was afraid that you would say that. You know, the troll has killed more Nora then then the amount that have come away with information.”

But Aloy would bet that those Nora hadn’t been demigods like her. She has no idea if that will make things easier or harder, but she does know that other the other Nora’s interactions would have little relation to how her face down with the troll will go.

Besides, when dealing with a higher troll, only one thing matters. “Do you know his name?” Aloy asks, trying not to let her breath catch with expectation.

“Nero,” Varl sighs. “I expect that there’s nothing that I can do to stop you from going.”

“You would be right,” Aloy says primly. “The northern ruins?”

“They won’t be hard to find,” Varl says. “You can almost see them from here.” He narrows his eyes and stares at her. “Would you allow me to come with you? I would have liked to have done more to try and find Rost, and I think that he wouldn’t want you to go unaccompanied on a trip like this.”

“I work better alone,” Aloy says. “But thank you for offering.” She doesn’t need Varl dragging her down or trying to pay the toll for her – or worse, being her toll. She knew that trolls love the taste of human meat.

“I see,” Varl says. “Well. Are you going to stay for the night, before you go?”

Aloy’s stomach rumbles. Varl raises an eyebrow as she tries not to blush.

“You can bunk down in my lodge, if you’d like,” Varl offers. “Without my mother here, it’s empty besides me.” He turns and starts to head deeper into the settlement. “Coming? I know where we can get some food.”

“Thanks,” Aloy says, following him along the path. The Nora give way with no hassle, Varl’s rank parting them easily. Aloy trusts Varl to lead the way and uses the time to look around. She doesn’t recognise any of the Nora, but if they introduced themselves she probably would – even though she and Rost live away from any settlement, she had still spent a fair amount of time in Rost’s shadow listening to people give him the gossip when she was younger.

Their Mother’s Marks are more informative than their faces – she can see the evidence of several family lines that had spread outside of the Embrace. It’s interesting to see the differences in clothing as well – these Nora are wearing far more armour what Aloy is used to seeing.

Varl stops at a fire, and Aloy tries not to feel too awkward as she sits down next to him. There’s already four people at the fire, two women and two men.

“Took you long enough, Varl,” the older woman says grouchily. There’s already an empty plate by her side, so she must not have waited to finish her food. She’s carving at the boar that’s roasting over the fire, so she hasn’t seen Aloy yet.

“He brought a guest,” the man sitting next to her says. He has midnight black skin and dark eyes that are eyeing Aloy critically.

“Resh was holding her up at the gate,” Varl says. “This is Aloy.”

Aloy nods at the others. She appreciates Varl introducing her, so that they can’t presume that she’s allowing them to use her name.

“This is Haro and Fia,” the older woman says, pointing at the man with light skin and the younger woman.

“Oh,” Aloy says, looking at Fia. “I’m a friend of Teb. He told me that you lived here.”

Fia brightens. “How is he?”

“Good,” Aloy says. “He’s really improved his skills over the last few months. He stitched this for me.” She shows Fia her armour – leather that Teb had worked, dyed and coloured how Aloy had wanted.

Fia smiles. “I’m glad! It looks really good.”

“I assume you want some food too?” the woman asks, already carving into the meat. Varl leans down to open a small container by the fire and used a set of tongs to put some greens on his plate as well. Aloy copies him when she gets her plate.

“I’m Gahltha and this is Elspeth,” the man with the black skin says, voice low.

“I’ve heard of you,” Elspeth says. “Live to the south of Mother’s Heart, right? With that old recluse, Rost.”

“Yes,” Aloy says. “But he’s missing.”

The others nod solemnly. “We’ve heard,” Fia says, looking at Aloy sadly.

“Gahltha and I haven’t seen anything, and we’ve been patrolling the valleys for the last few days,” Elspeth says. “Sorry, kid.”

Aloy manages to nod and bites into her food so she won’t have to respond. Varl asks about the patrols of the day, and Elspeth answers concisely.

“What’s it like living outside a town?” Fia asks Aloy quietly, letting the other’s louder conversation wash over them.

Aloy shrugs a shoulder, swallowing the meat. “Quiet. Every time I go into a village, it’s so loud. I don’t know how you can hear yourselves think, living in a lodge with so many other people. Rost snores and I can only just deal with that.”

Fia lets out a little chuckle. “Ah, you get used to it. All the noises, I mean. I don’t know if I could sleep without a lot of noise! It would be really weird. I suppose it all comes down to what you’re used to, hey?”

Aloy nods. The greens had been stirred with an herb that she recognises as being a fever preventative, and it’s slightly strange to be eating a medicinal herb as a flavour enhancer.

“Do you know where you’ll be sleeping tonight? There’s probably an extra space for you in Haro’s mother’s lodge – that’s where I’m staying now.”

“Varl said that I could stay with him,” Aloy says, putting her plate down. It’s scraped clean, her hunger making itself apparent when she had food in front of her – it probably helped that she hadn’t cooked the meal. She has a tendency to do with the bare minimum of what was needed to eat her food, since she’s usually so hungry she doesn’t want to wait to eat. Plus, carrying around fancy cooking equipment isn’t exactly high on her list of important things she needs to take along when facing the wilderness.

“If you’re staying with Varl, then you should be able to sleep well. After all, his mother and sister aren’t here right now, so his lodge will be quiet.”

“I see,” Aloy says. She looks across the fire at Varl, who is deep in discussion with Gahltha and Elspeth about patrol routes. “Well, I need to get going early tomorrow morning, so I’m glad I won’t be disturbing a lot of people.”

Varl must have caught her words, because he looks up to meet her eyes. “You’re right, Aloy, you will want an early start tomorrow. If you’ve finished your dinner, I can show you to my lodge. You should rest up.”

“Thank you,” Aloy says, standing. She waves at Fia as they leave, winding between the lodges of the town. Aloy lifts a hand as snowflakes began to drift down around them.

Varl comes to a stop in front of a lodge with no lights on inside. Aloy closes the door behind her and the inside of the building is cast into almost complete darkness.

“Sorry,” Aloy calls, but Varl has already struck a spark and is poking grass into the fireplace. Aloy goes over and helps him feed logs into the fire, until there’s a good blaze going.

“That should last for most of the night,” Varl says, satisfied.

“Yep,” Aloy says. She stands up and looks around the lodge now that things can be seen in the flickering firelight. There are multiple beds, but only one looks like it has been recently used.

“My bed is over there,” Varl says, pointing to the one closest to the door. “You can sleep in any you’d like. My sister sleeps by the fire, though – she says she’s always cold, and it’s the furthest away from me.”

“Your sister?” Aloy asks, undoing her belt and placing all her pouches between two beds. She’ll use the one that’s next to Varl’s sister’s bed.

“Yeah,” Varl says. “I haven’t seen her in a few years, though sometimes it feels like longer. Our mother sent her to Meridian – to become a priestess in the Earth Temple.”

Aloy tries not to jolt – Elisabet is the head priestess of the Earth Temple. If she ever travelled to Meridian, it would probably be the first place she went to. “Oh,” she says. “It’s an honour to be accepted.”

“That’s what my mother said as well,” Varl says, something like regret lining his words. “Vala didn’t take to the suggestion very well, though. She loved the forest and the Embrace, and hunting and providing for the tribe. She burned to participate in the Proving and become a brave, but she was too young to try for it when she left. She would have come of age last winter.” Varl shoots a look at her. “She would be about your age, I think.”

Aloy nods, because she had come of age several months ago too. If she had wanted to participate in the Proving, then this would have been the first year that she could have done so. Of course, there was no reason to – she wanted nothing from the Nora that she couldn’t get herself, and becoming a brave meant that there would only be a limited amount of time before someone found out that she’s a demigod.

She doesn’t waste any time in stripping off her armour and lying down on the bed. Facing a higher troll is going to be tough, and she’s going to need all the rest that she can get.

* * *

 

The northern ruins are easy to find. Varl had told her that the locals called it Devil’s Thirst – because of all the little devils that used to inhabit the place. Apparently Nero the higher troll had been attracted to the ruins in the first place because he likes the taste of them.

The place had probably been magnificent once – in the ruins, Aloy sees evidence of the type of a large, permanent building that Rost has told her about but that the Nora don’t build. It had used rock instead of wood like Nora buildings, and so Aloy is still trying to figure out how they would have made things work. How could you stack stones so they make a roof, without it all collapsing?

Then, of course, the question of who built the ruins, and why they were abandoned. Aloy sits on top of the last hill before the rolling stone and crumbling walls and studies the layout of the place. Nero will be in the deepest, darkest part. And she seriously doubts that he’s eaten all of the devils in there – and she knows that they won’t be the only things hiding in the dark corners, either. Her skin itches, just like it does every time there’s a monster around. The demigod part of her wants the kill; the blood.

Sometimes she wonders if she thinks about it like that to make herself feel better. _Her demigod part._ The entirety of her being, of who she is, is a demigod – it’s not a separate, outside force like she sometimes thinks about it as. But maybe she wants it to be. Then she could blame these bloodthirsty thoughts on someone else. After all, it’s hard to escape thoughts coming from her own head.

She shakes off the feeling. There’s a crumbling tower that’s still partially erect, and it’s the tallest building still standing. Aloy suspects that a higher troll might like that type of spot, so she rises to her feet and sidles down the hill, eyes sharp for any movement. This close, she can feel the presence of monsters nipping at her skin. There won’t be any Nora around, so anything she spots will be an enemy.

As she steps into the boundary of the ruins, they start to blot out the sun, leaving tendrils of coolness over her skin, almost like the ruins are grasping at her. Aloy resists the urge to shiver and heads deeper into the darkness.

There are small skittering things that leave the hair on her arms raised. Even with her bow gripped tightly in her hand, she’s careful as she crosses the ruins, always aiming for the tallest tower.

A whisper of sound lets her roll into a nearby patch of thick grass just in time to avoid being seen by the creature that had just entered the courtyard. It has a long, snaking reptile tail that gradually morphs into the body of a woman. Aloy threads an arrow into her bow and checks all her pockets to make sure that everything’s in place and nothing is about to fall out.

The lamia’s head swivels towards her suddenly; it must be sensing her body heat. There’s barely time to aim her arrow before the lamia is on top of her, fangs flashing with deadly poison. Aloy sprints into a slide to dodge and reloads. She has to dive out of the way again before she can get another shot off, this one landing in the lamia’s chest. It lets out an inhuman screech, probably alerting every monster in the vicinity to their location. Aloy grits her teeth and shoots another arrow into its chest while it’s screaming. That one lands directly in its heart, and the expression on its beautiful face freezes before cracks split across its skin, centring from where the last arrow landed. The lamia bursts apart in a cloud of dust and Aloy takes a few quick steps back to avoid breathing any of it in. Yuck.

The godly part of her tells her that there are more monsters coming – a lot of them. Biting back a snarl, she sprints down another pathway, hoping to avoid most of them, or at least get out of a confrontation. She isn’t here for a drawn out fight.

The presence of the monsters follows her through the ruins. Aloy shoots a few little devils that she comes across, not wanting their long claws to find their way into her skin if she leaves them behind. The mere thought has her shuddering and moving faster.

Finally, the tallest ruin comes into view. Aloy doesn’t want to hesitate outside it – Nero is probably already watching her, so everything from now on has to be an act. Plus, waiting out here means that the monsters behind her will have a chance to catch up. They’ll probably stay away from the troll’s lair, though – those that haven’t learned that would have been eaten by now.

So she takes a breath, and steps into the deep shadows of the lair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who left comments last chapter, I'm happy to see that people are interested in this little AU of mine. I'm going to try and do updates every Mon/Tue since I write better if I'm kept on a deadline, but we'll see how that turns out XD


	3. Chapter 3

Immediately, the stench of the place attaches itself to her skin and gets on her nerves. She refuses to gag and peers into the inky blackness to try and make out any details of the cave. Her gut is telling her that there is something a lot bigger, and a lot more dangerous, in here compared to the specks outside.

“Ohoho. This is a surprise.”

Aloy flinches and immediately curses herself for it. The troll’s voice is rough and male and intimidating and amused. It’s unsettling, and she hates that it shows.

“It’s not every day that you see a child of the earth mother,” Nero says. Aloy boldly takes a step forward, and within the darkness she can begin to make out his shape. He’s big – bigger than she expected, at any rate. Most trolls stand about the height of her shoulders, but Aloy suspects that her head wouldn’t reach the middle of Nero’s chest. In a confined environment like this cave, his size would mean that he could crush her easily.

“Higher trolls are rare as well,” Aloy points out cautiously. “And even rarer are those who know how to use the magical tools that come into their possession.”

“Ah,” Nero says, voice turning hard. “So you have come to bargain. And here I was thinking that I could amuse myself with you if you had come to kill me.”

“I doubt that I could kill you,” Aloy says. A little flattery never hurt.

Nero lets out a chuckle. “At least you understand your position, demigod. Which makes me even more curious as to why you have come here.”

“I have come to bargain, Nero,” Aloy says, the name falling between them with the weight of a hammer. Nero’s snarl filled the room – by invoking his name, in her position as a demigod, she has forced his hand. Now they will bargain – but they will be Nero’s terms. Hopefully, she can come out of this with a deal that she can live with, as well as knowing what has happened to Rost.

“Names are powerful things,” Nero sulks. “What is yours, demigod?”

“Is that your price?” Aloy asks. Giving her name away would not be ideal, but for Rost she would do it.”

Nero snarls, and Aloy manages not to flinch. It doesn’t feel like it had been directed at her, anyway. He’s just angry that she knows his name – angry at whoever had told her.

“Very well,” he says, voice silkier than before. “What do you wish for?”

“My father, Rost, has disappeared,” Aloy says, standing her ground stubbornly as the troll comes out of the deeper darkness and enough light falls on him so she can see him clearly. His skin is a mottled purple-orange colour, and he’s more round than tall – and he’s far taller than she is. “I know you have a seer stone. I want you to use it and tell me where he is.”

“Your father?” Nero asks. “Interesting… I’ve never known the earth mother to take a male human as a consort before.”

“He’s not blood related to me,” Aloy says through gritted teeth. “But he’s raised me for my whole life.”

“A pure human, eh? They should know better than to get involved with their affairs of the gods. After all, with no godly protector, a human’s only defence is a god’s ignorance of them. And if he’s raised you…” Nero trails off, his chuckle rumbling around the inside of the building, the distorted echoes making Aloy’s hair stand on end.

“Will you do it?” Aloy presses.

“Of course,” Nero says, voice becoming wide and _pleased_ in a way that makes Aloy want to be sick. “After you’ve done something for me.”

Aloy resists the urge to back away as Nero creeps closer.

“An unblooded demigod… I can smell it on you.”

“The hell does that mean?” Aloy snarls.

“You’ve never killed another demigod,” Nero muses. “Never upset a god. Do the gods even know you exist, child? So young, and hidden away in this corner of the world. I would not be surprised if they did not. Especially with all the turmoil in the heavens lately…”

“Just tell me what you want me to do,” Aloy says, baring her teeth.

Nero contemplates her for a few seconds. “On the northern edge of these ruins, there is a place teeming with humans,” he finally says. “They come into my ruins and kill my lamias, just like you did. Normally my lamias can kill a few of them, and that drives them back for a few days before they venture any closer, but I command creatures of darkness, and they are weak in the open air. I cannot order them to go and destroy the camp. I want you to kill all of the humans that are there… including the demigod that leads them.”

Aloy stares at him. She remembers Varl saying that there was a bandit camp that had been making trouble for the Nora, but she doubts that they could stand against Nero if he wanted to kill them. Which makes his price something else – something hidden in the task.

“That is my price,” Nero says slyly. “I’ll be watching through the stone, so make sure you get every last one.”

“Fine,” Aloy says tightly. “I’ll be back soon.”

“I’m sure you will,” Nero says. Aloy tries not to run out of the cave, but she does walk fast.

The monsters from before are still hanging around, so she takes the long way to go north, heading east for a while until she’s sure that there’s nothing around her. She sees another lamia, but it’s in the distance, and she ducks behind a low crumbling wall until its gone past.

Coming out of the deepest part of the ruins makes her feel like a she’s rinsed off the foul clinging stench of Nero’s cavern. Aloy takes a deep breath and rubs her hands over her face. First, she needs to find this camp – and then, she can debate whether or not she was going to go in and… kill the people. She’s certain that it’s not what Rost would want, if there’s a demigod amongst the bandits. He’s always so stringent about her staying away from anything that could betray her parentage.

It’s not hard to find the camp – there’s heavy smoke rising from the multiple fires that Aloy can see burning around the perimeter and inside the fortifications. Monsters dislike few things, but they do definitely dislike fire. Fire is one of the few things that can kill them, outside of a weapon wielded by a demigod.

She finds a hill that looks over the camp and squats to study it. It’ll be hard to get into, that’s for sure. There are walls everywhere, and while that can provide cover, it also makes ambushes extremely easy to set up. There are too many people to try and take the camp out completely stealthily – someone will notice that people are dropping dead long before she can snipe them all. She doesn’t know what they would do then, but she would go inside and get away from anywhere that a sniper could reach. Though that would make them sitting ducks – so maybe they would come out of the fortress and search for her?

She shakes her head. If she’s going to try and take down the camp, she would need to take out the sentries first, and as quickly as possible so that they don’t alarm the entire camp before she can get into a good position to strike. She counts her arrows and then grabs her sharpshot bow from her back – it’s the best bow for long range fighting.

“Oh? What have we here?”

Aloy nearly jumps out of her skin. She’s been so focused on the camp before her that she hasn’t heard anyone sneak up behind her. She whirls, trying not to snarl as she faces the person.

It’s a man, with a headdress and no shirt for some reason. He has tattoos or make up underneath his eyes, which are a sharp grey. There’s something about his eyes that immediately unsettle her. She can tell that this man is no stranger to killing.

“How strange, to find someone here also stalking the same prey,” he muses. “Well, fate does have a way of intersecting paths if needed. But just so you know, there’s danger here, girl.”

“Danger for you, maybe. These are Nora lands. Who are you?” Aloy asks, slightly thrown by his odd way of talking.

“My name is Nil,” he says, tilting his head slightly. Aloy tries not to feel like she’s being stalked. “And who are you?”

“Hmph,” she says grumpily instead of giving her own name. She doesn’t feel the same need as the Nora to hide her name, but she’s not exactly sure she wants it in the mouth of this man. He smiles, and she tries not to shiver.

“Well,” he says. “It seems we share the same goal.”

“Which is?”

“Ridding this place of the scum that infests it. Removing these tepid lives from existence. Feeling their slick blood on our hands.”

Aloy stares at him. “You’re here to… kill the bandits?”

“Camps like this are a blessing, you know,” Nil says. “So much prey, all in the same place.” His gaze turns to the camp. “There they are, like grubs under a rock. And if you disturb the rock, they’ll come wriggling out, ready to be squashed.” He turned his eyes on her, sharp against her skin. Aloy probably would have quailed, if not for the fact that she’d just been exposed to Nero and he was a lot worse than this. “Say, why don’t we work together? Kill them all.”

 _A man._ The godly part nestled deep inside her tells her that he is no demigod.

“I don’t know you, and have no reason to trust you,” Aloy says tightly. Even if he isn’t a demigod, and Nero hadn’t said that she had to do it _alone,_ she isn’t sure she wants Nil’s companionship.

“Trust is a fickle thing,” Nil says. “I’m just travelling through, and I just happen to have a bow, and there just happens to be a bandit camp here. Who am I to argue against fate’s whims?”

“I doubt you’re ‘just’ anything,” Aloy mutters.

Nil lets out a soft sigh. “Let me put it this way. Are you a bandit?”

“No!” Aloy says, scandalised.

“Then you have nothing to fear from me,” Nil says, as if that’s so obvious that having to spoon feed it to her makes him doubt her sanity. Aloy looks at him from the side of her eye. Nil’s soft voice and strange words make it obvious that _he_ is the one who’s sanity should be doubted, if sanity doubting is necessary.

“Fine, come along,” Aloy finally says. At least this way she’ll get to keep an eye on him. “But don’t get in my way.”

“Of course,” Nil says softly, voice lingering over her skin. Aloy tries not to feel like he’s patronising her.

Aloy takes a breath and then lets it out, shaking the weird vibes away. She checks her gear over one more time before slipping into the nearby tall grass, keeping her steps light and leaving as little a trace as she can on the ground. Behind her, she hears the grass rustle as Nil joins her. A part of her wonders if she’ll get an arrow in the back for her troubles, but somehow she doesn’t think that Nil is the type of person to lie. The look in his eyes said that there was no point in deceiving the world to his intentions. He says that he’s only after the bandits; strangely enough, Aloy finds herself believing him.

She stops just in range of her bow and nocks an arrow, aiming at the sentry furthest from the camp. A light rain had started up, making things harder to see, but it would also hide any noises that the fallen men would make, and would limit visibility. Hopefully no one would notice the downed sentries.

Aloy draws her bow and breathes, carefully calculating the trajectory through the rain. A breath later and she releases the arrow, watching as it disappears into the head of the sentry. He collapses, and Aloy’s eyes are quick to move to the other sentries, watching for any strange movement. If one of them had noticed something, they would be her next target.

But there’s no extra movement from the sentries. She slinks through the grass to get closer to the next sentry, who is looking in the opposite direction of their approach, so she doesn’t worry too much about crossing open stretches of ground.

The second sentry goes down as easily as the first, and it’s only a matter of time until they’re all dead. Nil hums behind her.

“You’re a good sniper,” he murmurs. Aloy can’t help but feel that while he admires her skill, he would prefer her to have blood on her when she kills.

“The less of them there are, the more confusion there will be,” Aloy mutters back. “And they’re standing still, so it’s not like they’re hard targets. The moving ones inside will be tougher. Do you want to go through the front? How fast is your draw?”

“More than fast enough,” Nil says.

“Well then here we go,” Aloy says, more to herself than him. There’s someone smoking out the front of the large gates, and Aloy gets a shot off to kill her before she can call the alarm and close the gates to make things difficult for them.

Inside, there’s little long grass. The twisted walls of the ruins are all the cover that they’re going to get.

“You go first,” Aloy tells Nil. “I’m better at shooting from the back.” _And you look like you want to get up close._

“I thought you’d never ask,” Nil says, sounding more than pleased. He takes the lead and Aloy follows ten steps behind, eyes flicking all around them to watch for threats. In the layered ruins, their biggest threat now is someone taking a defensive post in a crumbling tower and sniping at them from cover.

Nil has a bow, but now that she’s behind him she can see a wicked looking knife sticking out of his belt as well. She strongly suspects that he knows how to use it.

“I’m left!” Aloy shouts as two men pop out from around a corner, and Nil takes down the one on the right as Aloy shoots one arrow and then another into the chest of the man on the right. Cursing to herself, she slings her sharpshot bow over her shoulder and grabs her hunting bow, sorting out the new arrows as fast as she can move her fingers. In close quarters combat, this bow is far faster to draw.

Nil takes down two more bandits when he ducks around the corner, and Aloy aims up at someone standing on the roof.

“An alarm!” Nil calls out, and Aloy’s attention is drawn to a strange looking device in the centre of the clearing. “It will bring more – let them ring it.”

Aloy isn’t so sure that that’s a good idea, so she clears a path over there and jabs her spear into the mechanism with as much force as she can, destroying it. A sound behind her gives her a second to leap into a roll and out of the way of a man with an axe as he buries it into the ground where she’d just been standing.

A warning goes off in the back of her head and her attention is forcibly narrowed to the man in front of her.

His grin bares his white teeth, and his eyes are shining with a feral, red tinge that makes Aloy’s hackles stand on end. He hefts his axe over his shoulder and swaggers forward. Aloy fires off a quick shot but the man dodges it, impossibly fast.

She’s found the demigod.

Aloy’s teeth are bared before she has any say in the matter, and she leaps away again as the axe comes down, far faster than a weapon and man of that size should be. Aloy fires another arrow but the man dodges it again and _laughs._

“Oh, is this your first fight, lass?” he leers. “Gotta do better than that if you’re to go up against a son of Ares. I just don’t do defeat, you know?”

A son of Ares – a warrior to the bone, then. Aloy’s normal advantage in a fight is distance, and if she loses that, her speed. But this man is faster than her, and closes distance almost as fast as she can create it. She’s beginning to realise the real reason why Nero couldn’t clear this camp – this demigod is skilled, and if Nero wasn’t in his domain, then he would have a severe disadvantage against him. And demigods are one of the few things that can actually kill a monster.

There’s screaming and shouting around her, and Aloy falls flat to the ground to avoid an axe swing and an arrow that would have hit her in the head. With arrows flying everywhere, Aloy takes half a second to lament the fact that she hadn’t sniped more of the bandits from outside of the camp while she had the chance.

Gritting her teeth, Aloy leaps into a roll and comes up sprinting. There’s no way she’s going to down this demigod in the middle of the square, with half a dozen bandits around to shoot arrows at her. The ruins are full of cover that she can take advantage of, and even if it just means facing the demigod alone.

She can hear footsteps right behind her, but Aloy is fast and lithe even if she doesn’t know the exact layout of these ruins. So she ducks and dodges and weaves as best as she can, and prays to whatever god is listening that the demigod wouldn’t decide to throw his axe.

She rounds a corner and dives into a patch of tall grass, panting. A second later the demigod comes into the clearing too, eyes alight with exhilaration from the chase. His gaze skitters over the ruins, and Aloy sinks deeper into the grasses, encouraging them to hide her.

Normally just sitting in some grass wouldn’t exactly be the best hiding place, but Aloy is the daughter of _Gaia_ , Mother Earth. Plants obey her wishes, and the grasses hide her so effectively that there’s no trace at all of her being there.

The son of Ares stalks past her hiding place, and Aloy silently grabs her sharpshot bow. She carefully nocks two arrows at the same time and draws the bow. The demigod is wearing a helmet, so she’s going to have to hit something vital in his body.

She lets off the two arrows and they sink into his back deeply. The demigod pitches forward onto his face without a sound, and Aloy waits for a few seconds before slowly standing.

She walks over and nudges the body with a foot, but he doesn’t move. The demigod part of her is quiet – there’s no longer any threat here. He isn’t wearing any armour, which is very unlike what Rost had told her about Ares’ offspring. She must have caught him in a bad moment, which means she probably only got out of this fight alive by pure chance.

Uncomfortable, she rifles through his pockets. She’s used to her kills disappearing into thin air and leaving anything useful behind. She doesn’t touch the axe that’s still grasped loosely in his hand – she can tell that it has some sort of blessing on it, and she doesn’t want to mess with that. There’s a pouch of coins that she does take, but otherwise she leaves the body how it is.

On the way back she finds a set of stairs and hops up them, moving towards where she can still hear fighting happening. The stairs open up into a space that she wouldn’t call a roof, but is situated above the area where Nil is still fighting.

It’s him and four others, and as Aloy watches he downs one. Nil is bloody but still standing, so Aloy nocks an arrow and carefully aims at the archer that’s standing still a few steps back from the melee.

After a few seconds, there’s only Nil and the bodies below her. Aloy lets out a sigh and then carefully looks around the area for anyone else. She’s good at picking up if there are animals nearby (another gift from her godly mother) and she can tell that there are two more lives north of them.

She jumps down to stand with Nil, who is more bloody than she’d realised.

“Are you okay?”

He smiles, and that’s not creepy at all. “Now that these pitiful creatures have been wiped from the face of this earth? I’m feeling quite good.”

“Even if there’s an arrow in your thigh,” Aloy says, staring at it.

Nil shrugs. “I’ll deal with it.”

“There’s two more over there,” Aloy says. “You stay here.”

But Nil follows her when she crouches down and starts towards the two life signatures she can sense. However, when she rounds the corner there are two men tied up together, and she lets out a breath.

“Prisoners,” Nil says, and she can hear the scowl in his voice. He’s probably upset that they aren’t more people for him to kill. Aloy unties the two men, who are both Nora that she doesn’t recognise. After thanking her, they depart from the ruins, leaving Aloy to deal with Nil, who is sitting down underneath some scant cover. It’s still raining, and they’re both soaked, but Aloy wouldn’t want to deal with an arrow in her thigh in the middle of a storm either.

“Here, chew on this,” she says, grudgingly pulling some painkilling plants from a pouch.

“I don’t suppose these will put my out of my misery,” Nil says.

“They’ll dull the pain, yes,” Aloy says tightly. Then she runs the words over again and evaluates them alongside what she knows of Nil. “Wait, did you just ask if I was giving you something that would kill you?”

Nil gives her an inscrutable look and eats the plants. Aloy stares at him in consternation before looking back at his thigh.

“Remind me not to get injured around you,” Aloy mutters to herself. The arrow doesn’t look like it’s near anything important, so she gets a good grip around it and looks up at Nil. “I’ll pull this out in three, two –”

She doesn’t wait for one, yanking the arrow out along the same trajectory that it went in. Nil snarls as Aloy chucks the arrow away and then puts her hand over the wound, closing her eyes and concentrating. She’s much better at doing this for herself, but she’s healed Rost a few times so she knows the basics.

After a few seconds she lifts her hand and wipes away most of the blood. The wound is closed (at least on the outside) and looks like it’ll hold.

“Don’t walk around too much or you’ll open it up again,” Aloy told him. “It’s less healed than it looks, trust me.”

If she’d been doing this on herself, she could have healed it completely. On another person her powers are a lot more limited. The rain spits in her face, keeping her tethered to the present.

“Convenient,” Nil drawls.

“Don’t get used to it,” Aloy warns him. She stands up and rubs her head, trying to will her light-headedness away. Healing others always leaves her a bit dizzy.

“You’re a very interesting person,” Nil says casually. “We live in a world full of ruins, of squalid places for bandits to squat in. They’re drawn to them like an infection to a wound. You wouldn’t want that infection to set in, would you? I think we’ll meet again; and even if we just pass each other by, we’ll know it by the work.”

“Maybe we’ll meet again, if it can’t be helped,” Aloy says warily. She steps away from Nil, feet splashing in a puddle, confident that there isn’t anything else that she can do to help him, and burning from the inside out – she needs to get back to Nero.

She needs answers.

* * *

 

Making herself enter Nero’s cave again is one of the most difficult things Aloy has ever done, but information about Rost drives her forward into the cave and out of the rain.

“I’m back,” Aloy calls out stubbornly, even though she feels like throwing up.

“I saw.”

“I killed the bandits, and the demigod,” she says. “My part of the deal is done.”

“You’re lucky that you caught the demigod by surprise,” Nero says, voice rumbling through the air like the first stones of a rockslide. “But I suppose done is done. I’ve looked for your man.”

“And?” Aloy presses.

Nero chuckles, and it rubs against Aloy’s skin like the most nauseating touch she’s ever received.

“Well, he might be in more trouble than even _you_ … and that’s saying something.”

“Where is he?” Aloy asks, trying not to sound panicked.

“He’s not dead,” Nero says ponderously.

That’s… good, right? Then why did she feel so sick?

“I couldn’t see where he was, but I can tell you this – he was taken by a god.” He moves his head, and his eyes gleam red in the darkness. “I told you that getting involved with godly affairs was dangerous for a human.”

“Who took him?” Aloy demands.

“I cannot say,” Nero tells her.

“That’s hardly a fair exchange!” Aloy yells, frustration and fear bubbling over. “What do you mean, taken? Surely you have more than that!”

“You forget yourself,” Nero rumbles, and Aloy steps back as he comes a few steps forward. Her throat is parched suddenly, and she can’t make herself move. “Our deal is over, demigod. You have no more business here.”

Aloy snarls, a wordless thing full of her anger, and turns and sprints out of the cave. She’s hit with a deluge of water – in the few minutes she’s spent inside the storm has worsened considerably. The rain is falling so hard she can hardly see, and it’s a struggle to keep her footing on the wet ground.

She doesn’t care.

She runs through the monsters around the ruins, killing them with her spear just to vent a little. She goes after the two lamias that she sees, mostly out of spite, and kills them too. The rain stops their dust from going far.

But even in her anger, she doesn’t want to spend the night in the ruins. It’s hard to tell with the heavy clouds overhead still bucketing down, but she leaves the fallen stones behind her before the sun dips below the horizon.

Heart heavy with her sorrow and mind full of thoughts, she makes sure to keep to the grass and shadows on the way back to Mother’s Crown, even though the sheets of rain should hide everything. A bolt of lightning splits the sky, and a second later a crack of thunder assaults her ears. The storm is right on top of her.

It’s nearing the middle of the night by the time she gets within sight of the walls of Mother’s Crown, and it’s _still_ raining, the type of heavy, set in rain that makes Aloy think this storm will last for days. The gates are closed, and even if there is a sentry in one of the towers, she doubts they’ll be able to see her. Another bolt of lightning cleaves the sky into pieces. Aloy winces through the heavy rumble of thunder that follows. It feels like the very air around her is vibrating with tense energy, just like she is.

It’s a cold, miserable night, and it matches her mood perfectly. Sourly, she finds a stand of trees that blocks out a little bit of the rain, and lays down in the grass in the middle of the scant shelter. She’s going to be filthy in the morning, and she doesn’t bother getting out her sleeping things because they’d just get muddy and soaked and she’d still be cold anyway.

“Who, who.”

Aloy squints up into the trees, jaw dropping when she finds Beaky huddled miserably in the middle of the trees.

“What are you doing here?” Aloy asks, annoyed and worried and glad that she isn’t alone.

“Who,” Beaky hoots sadly.

Aloy sighs. “Come down here and hide in my shirt.”

Beaky falls more than flies down and Aloy catches him awkwardly. The owl doesn’t suffer being shoved under her shirt very well, and Aloy winces at the scratches he leaves in her skin. But it’s warmer than being by herself, and Beaky is definitely warmer under there as well.

The rain continues to fall.

She doesn’t try to get any sleep. It’s pointless anyway, and she doesn’t want to roll over and crush Beaky in the middle of the night. So she sits, and she thinks, and she plans.

When the darkness lets up a little, she gets up, probably looking like she’s some sort of mud demon. She shakes Beaky out of her shirt and he reluctantly clings to her shoulder instead. Aloy convinces him to sit in the trees until she comes back out of the village, and then leaves her pathetic shelter. The nearby river is roaring and strong, so she can’t even jump in to get some of the mud off. She wonders if she looks as shitty as she feels.

She manages to signal the sentry in the tower, who opens the gate for her after she yells her identity to him seven or so times. It’s only a tiny bit less wet inside Mother’s Crown, but at least the walls block the wind a little.

She trudges towards the communal fire, but it’s out. Aloy doesn’t know what else she expected. Muttering curses under her breath, she makes her way over to Varl’s lodge, and hopes he’s an early riser.

She knocks on the door and then leans against the support out front, huddled down to shield her face from the rain. The door opens, and Aloy raises her head with a greeting on her lips, but it isn’t Varl standing at the door. Instead it’s an older woman with his Mother’s Mark, so this must be Sona, Varl’s mother.

“Err,” Aloy says, trying not to feel pathetic.

Sona gives her a stony look. “I assume that you’re here to see my son.”

“…Yeah,” Aloy says a little sheepishly.

Sona closes the door in her face. Aloy supposes that’s fair. She’s wearing more mud than clothes at the moment. She wouldn’t want her in her house either.

A minute later the door opens again, but Varl is there this time instead. She gives him an awkward smile.

“Sorry for my mother,” Varl says. Then he takes in her appearance. “Are you okay?”

“Just muddy,” Aloy mutters.

“Did you meet with Nero?” Varl asks, concern clear in his voice.

“Yeah,” Aloy makes herself say. “He said… that Rost was kidnapped. By a god.”

Varl stares at her, his rich, dark eyes assessing. “And you’ve had no contact from any god?”

“No,” Aloy said.

“Gods are fickle, but if they didn’t want anything from him then whoever took him would have just killed him,” Varl says slowly. “There must have been a purpose.”

Aloy nods. “I agree. Which is why… I’m going to Meridian.”

Varl’s eyebrows shoot up. “Meridian? Why?”

“My mother lives there,” Aloy says. “She knows Rost, and she knows the gods. If there’s anyone who will be able to guess who took Rost and why, then it’ll be her. I need to find him, and Meridian’s my best chance.”

Varl nods grimly. “I think you’re probably right. But if you’re going to Meridian, can I ask a favour of you?”

“Sure,” Aloy says. “I owe you for letting me stay here.”

Varl waves her off. “It was no issue. Look, I told you my sister lives in Meridian. Would you be able to pass a message to her for me?”

“Vala, right?” Aloy asks. “You said she was an acolyte.”

“At the Earth Temple,” Varl confirms. “She’s been there for almost four years now. Letters come every now and then, but they’re quite rare, and I can tell that some of the letters that I’ve written her haven’t gone through. Would you take one to her for me?”

“Yeah,” Aloy said. “Do you want to write one?”

“I’ve already written one for the next time I saw a courier,” Varl says. He rifles through his pack for a few seconds before pulling out an envelope that looks stuffed full of paper and already worse for wear.

“I’ll take care of it,” Aloy says, opening her pack and arranging things so that the letter can fit inside the greased part of her pack that’s waterproof.

“Thank you, Aloy,” Varl says, a relieved expression coming over his face. “I owe you.”

Aloy shakes her head. “It’s nothing. Really.”

“Well in any case, thank you,” Varl says.

“If I’m delivering you a message, then can you deliver one for me?” Aloy asks boldly.

“Certainly,” Varl says.

“Can you tell Teb in Mother’s Heart that I’m going to Meridian, to find Rost? He should know that I’m safe and that I haven’t fallen dead in a ditch somewhere.”

“Okay,” Varl says. “I can tell him that.” He looks her over again. “Are you going to try and wash some of that mud off before you go?”

Aloy shakes her head. “It’s morning, and still raining. I’ll start this trail, and hopefully the rain will wash some of it off.”

“It’s much drier in Carja territory,” Varl warns. “Cherish the rain while you can.”

“I’ll be glad to have a break from it for a while,” Aloy jokes. “I’ll probably be back, sometime. So, I’ll see you around?”

Varl smiles. “Of course. I’ll look forward to it.”

She leaves his doorstep and steps back out into the rain. There’s no Nora standing around to watch her leave the village this time, so she strides boldly. At least the rain will keep her awake. Aloy has heard of a place north of Mother’s Crown that’s technically inside Nora territory but which outsiders can come to and that trade caravans go through, so that’s likely a good place to aim for.

She fetches Beaky, and the owl stubbornly perches on her shoulder. He can’t talk to her, but his message is clear – he’s coming with her on this journey, and there’s nothing she can do about it. Aloy tries not to sigh and tells him that she’s glad for a friend. Beaky lets out a happy “Who, who,” at that.

The wilderness welcomes her back, and like always, Aloy feels at home under the soaring trees of the forest. The sun isn’t out, but she still knows which way is north. She sets her feet on that trail, Beaky’s feathers soft against the side of her face, and starts walking.

The urge in her blood beckons her west and she promises it: soon. 


	4. Chapter 4

The rain continues for the next three days. Aloy can hardly hunt in it, but Beaky can’t either and he can’t eat jerky so she spends hours combing the bushes for rabbits that she can kill and strip meat off for him.

The rain washes the mud off but doesn’t allow for any dryness in the places where she sleeps. The second night, she finds a bit of an old ruin that has a functioning roof and four mostly intact walls, and collapses for probably more than twelve hours. At that point she’d been running on maybe four hours of sleep over three days, and had been coming off the big fight at the bandit camp. She’d fallen asleep instantly.

She stumbles into Hunter’s Gathering around midday on the third day after leaving Mother’s Crown. The rain has lessened to spitting instead of pouring, so she can see that there isn’t a lot of people standing around. The large fireplace in the middle of the camp is out and looks drowned.

Beaky grinds his beak beside her ear, and it startles her out of how she’d been staring that the wet fireplace. There’s a woman standing over by a tent, so Aloy trudges over there to greet her. Maybe she can get some warm food out of this place. Seriously, she would _kill_ for a warm, dry place to sleep right about now.

“A spark from the Nora lands,” the woman says, looking Aloy over. “Must be a pretty strong spark to be out in this weather.”

“It’s not great, is it?” Aloy says, happy to grouch over the rain. “Is this Hunter’s Gathering?”

“The one and only,” the woman says, sweeping her arm wide to indicate the mess of tents and mud that made up the area. Aloy isn’t sure there’s enough permanency to call it a town. “The name’s Gera.”

“I’m Aloy,” Aloy says. “I thought that normally there’s more people here.”

Gera hums lowly. “There’s been some strange things happening over the last week. Well, stranger than usual, anyway. The Carja fort at Daytower is closed, and that means that there hasn’t been any traffic from that direction. Then two days ago, some kind of demon rolled through here and took out half of the place.” She shakes her head. “We’re lucky that there wasn’t more deaths. Normally we burn our dead but with the rain it’s not exactly been a possibility. If it doesn’t let up by tomorrow, I’m going to have to organise to bury them all instead, and that’s not going to be easy.”

Aloy winces. Burning a corpse meant that no monster could get at it, and it sent the soul of the body onwards. Simply burying a body didn’t always send a soul to the Underworld – that’s how wraiths and similar monsters are born.

“How do you know it was a demon?” she asks.

Gera shrugs. “We don’t – all we know is that it raced through the camp, killed half a dozen people, and stood taller than my head. I didn’t see it myself, but the witnesses claimed that it was on fire, even though it was pissing down at that point, so we came to the conclusion that it must be some type of demon.”

Aloy frowned, looking at the wreckage of Hunter’s Gathering.

“Do you know why the Carja fort is closed?”

“Apparently there’s been demon sightings on our side of the border,” Gera says humourlessly. “I didn’t believe it, but well, then this happened. The Carja are stubborn – I don’t know if you’ve been out of the Nora valleys before, but I doubt they’re gonna open that fort of theirs for another few weeks.”

Aloy taps her fingers against her thigh. “It’s important that I cross the border,” she says. “Which way did the demon go? If I track it down and kill it, do you think that they might allow me to pass through the fort?”

Gera stares at her. “Little spark, I knew you had some fire in you!” She laughs. “Well, I don’t think you’d offer if you weren’t up for the challenge. The rain’s probably washed away all the tracks, but it left a path of destruction that I doubt will be hard to follow. It came from the west, and left towards the east.” Gera eyes her. “I like you, little spark, so you better come back from this.”

Aloy smiles back at her. “Okay, Gera. I will.”

Gera nods, and Aloy turns eastward. The urge in her blood to turn around and head west doubles, but she grits her teeth and starts surveying the damage done to Hunter’s Gathering.

It’s severe. The rain isn’t heavy enough to hide anything anymore, so she can see the destroyed parapets and tents easily. No one’s made an attempt to clean it up yet, and Aloy can’t find it in herself to blame them. She wouldn’t want to do anything in this weather either.

There aren’t any tracks from the monster, but Gera is right – it’s easy to follow the path of destruction. Aloy’s stomach rumbles and she mutters curses to herself as she digs out some jerky. Beaky sneezes.

She looks at him. “It’s probably best that you stay here. I’ll come and find you when I’m done hunting whatever this is.”

Beaky stares at her, unimpressed.

“I can’t exactly fight with you on my shoulder,” Aloy tells him. “And I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Beaky nips at her ear suddenly, and Aloy hisses as she feels warm blood trickle down her neck.

“That’s _really_ not nice, you know that right?”

Beaky continues to look unimpressed. Aloy sighs.

“Fine. But when I start fighting, you need to get off my shoulder, okay?”

Beaky lets out a soft ‘who’ which she takes as his agreement. Aloy shakes her head and then focuses on the woods again.

The trail is easy to follow, because the monster has cut a wide swath through the trees, downing many. In the wet conditions, the soil has given easily, so Aloy has to try to avoid slipping in the ruts in the ground. She’s not sure if they’re there because the trees have been ripped out of the ground, or if they’re the remnants of tracks from the monster that she’s following.

The forest is almost eerily deserted. Aloy calmly follows the path of destruction while keeping a sharp eye on her surroundings. She can tell that Beaky is paying attention to any disturbances as well. This far from any real settlements, she had expected a fair few monsters, maybe older, larger ones that lived in woods like these. While she does find some evidence of monster activity in the form of bones and burrows, there are no monsters themselves.

All evidence she finds is over three days old. Aloy tries not to feel unsettled by the implication that the monster she’s tracking has scared away everything else in the vicinity.

After an hour, fresher tracks cut through the ones she’s been following. Aloy compares the two tracks to be certain, but the marks on the trees are the same. She turns down the newer track and tries not to feel apprehensive. This monster is _big._

The rain has finally stopped, and that means that there’s no further degradation of the tracks, so Aloy picks up her pace. She ducks under a drooping branch that’s been half torn off its trunk, Beaky ruffling his feathers as water from the leaves falls on him. Aloy isn’t sure there’s much of a point, because he’s soaked anyway, but if it makes him feel better then she’s not one to judge. At this point she’s given up on ever being dry ever again, and has accepted her watery fate.

The trees suddenly thin, and Aloy ducks behind one of the last ones to look out over a clearing that’s set a few metres down, over a small cliff. The cliff runs around the clearing in a vaguely circular way, forming a crude semi-circle of an arena that’s bordered by more trees on the other edge. Within the arena there are no trees but several tuffs of Aloy’s favourite red grass, many large rocks sticking up out of the earth, and the biggest boar that Aloy has seen in her entire life.

She stares at it in shock as it roots around the base of one of the massive rocks, dragging its tusks through the ground and uprooting some red grass. It’s undoubtedly dangerous, and something this large this close to the Embrace and Nora lands makes her grit her teeth. She’s sure that this is a monster that only a demigod can kill – one of the most dangerous. She doesn’t know if she’ll be able to do if by herself, but it isn’t like she knows any other convenient demigods around here that can help her kill the biggest monster she’s ever seen.

This isn’t like one of her normal hunts, where a few well places arrows will be able to slay the monster. She thinks that a few arrows might just annoy this boar, and by the way that the light is reflecting off it, she’s starting to suspect that its hide isn’t normal either. It’ll be made out of something very strong – maybe strong enough resist her arrows.

Grimly, she gets out her tripcaster. She would probably have the advantage in the trees, except for how she half thinks that the boar will run through the trees like they aren’t there, and dying because a tree has fallen on her seems like a terrible way to go. There’s enough cover with the large rocks around here that she’ll be able to manoeuvre slightly, and by how big and heavy the boar is, she doubts that it will be able to turn fast. She has her agility, but that’s probably one of the only advantages she has.

Slowly, she makes her way around the edge of the cliff, towards the more flat end of the clearing. There she carefully shoots as many lines as she has into the ground, about thirty metres away from the tree line. If she can get it to run through all her blast wires, then she might stand a chance of injuring it enough to slow it down slightly.

The boar turns in her direction and snuffles. Aloy freezes, because she isn’t quite ready to fight it yet, and Beaky takes off from her shoulder, flying overhead and hooting loudly. The boar returns to snuffling and pawing at the dirt, and Aloy puts away her tripcaster and brings out her sharpshot bow. She’s going to need pure power if she wants to punch through that hide, even as she knows that this bow won’t be enough to do so. She’s going to need to aim at the weak points – the eyes, mouth, face, legs. The boar’s hide is gleaming like metal in the sun.

She takes a long drink of water and checks that all her pouches and all her gear is in position. She shuffles her pack so that her health potions are easy to grab, and focuses deep in herself, so that her innate magic is already humming and ready to go. She needs to be able to heal herself at a moment’s notice. In this fight, there isn’t going to be any space to breathe.

She carefully crafts more sharpshot arrows until she can’t hold any more, and then threads two into her bow. The boar has moved away slightly, and Beaky hasn’t come back, which she’s grateful for. She doesn’t need to be worrying about him in a fight.

She draws the bow, flexing her muscles easily, then slowly lets the pressure in the bow go, not releasing the arrows. She does that a few more times until she’s smooth and fast and her arms are warm. The boar turns so its head is facing her, and she draws her bow again, this time for real.

The first shot is one of the most important. Aloy waits until she’s certain, and then she looses the arrows. One goes too high and bounces off the thick hair protecting the top of the boar’s head, but the other hits true and sinks into the boar’s eye.

Gleeful, she breathes and nocks another two arrows while the boar squeals and prances and dances on the spot. Its one remaining eye glows red with anger, and it starts coming towards Aloy quickly, trotting into her trap.

Aloy aims and shoots at its other eye just before it hits her wires. She gets one arrow into its snout and the other glances off. The boar screams, finally spotting her, before ploughing into the blast wires.

The fiery explosion blows Aloy back off her feet, and she rolls into a run, sprinting for the nearest cover and reloading one arrow instinctively as she slides into a patch of grass. The boar is on fire and bucking, and Aloy uses the opportunity to place a few fire traps in front of her. Then she starts shooting at the boar, calmly aiming as it turns and begins to charge towards her, covering the ground devastatingly quickly.

Aloy jumps behind a rock outcropping as her fire traps go off, and she lays another two fire wires before sprinting away, needing distance. She jumps on top of a rock outcropping to find that the boar has already ploughed through her new fire lines and is charging towards her. She shoves down her panic and aims at its weak head. Her arrow hits and she leaps to the side at the last moment, feeling rocks and gravel stick in her arms as she rolls. The boar isn’t good at turning, just like she predicted, so she tries to shoot at its legs, but that doesn’t do her a lot of good. It turns and charges again, and she has resist the urge to sprint away. If she runs, it’ll get her. She needs to dodge at the last second.

She does, and hears its scream of frustration. She plants a few fire bombs between them, noticing how its fur is still on fire. That can’t be too good for it, and she wants to keep it alight for as long as possible.

Another four arrows, two of which hit, and she rolls. It’s a pattern – fire, roll, plant a wire or a bomb, fire again. She’s getting dangerously low on arrows, but there’s no way she has time to make any more. She needs to end this fight _now._

She leaps up onto the tallest rock outcropping in the clearing, and the boar slams into it at full speed. The rock shudders but holds, and Aloy fires down at the boar when it shows its head. It’s pawing and rooting at the rock, but Aloy suspects that this one is sunk deep into the earth. She touches it and asks the earth to hold it firm, and she can almost feel as the earth around the rock dries out and firms.

She carefully slings her bow on her back and grabs her spear, watching for her opening. The boar is still on fire, and she can tell that while pain from the arrows has maddened it, the blood loss is also quite significant, especially from the arrow she landed in its eye.

Finally, the boar looks up at her and screams, but Aloy is already moving.

She lets herself drop from the peak of the rock, spear braced in her hands. The boar looks up, she looks down, and lands with both her feet on its thick skull and her spear buried in its brain.

The boar shudders for a long moment, and wildly, Aloy thinks that she hasn’t killed it yet. If this doesn’t do it in, then she really has no other option but to run. But then it stills, and she sees the tell-tale flaking that means that the boar is about to disintegrate into dust. She’s too close to avoid it all, so she screws up her face and holds her breath.

When she opens her eyes again, most of the boar is gone. Under her feet is a perfectly preserved bone white skull, and she wrenches her spear out of it with an immense tug.

Laying beyond the skull is a thick piece of hide that’s the perfect amount to make some armour from.

“Hmm.” Aloy picks up the hide and slings it over her arm. It’s going to be a bitch to carry, but if she can get this to a proper armourmaker, then she suspects that it’ll be the best piece of armour that she’ll ever own.

In the sunlight, the thick hide glimmers and gleams.

Beaky lands back on her shoulder.

“Thank you for making yourself scarce,” she says.

“Who,” he replies.

“Right,” Aloy says, even though she’s got no idea what he just said. “Let’s get back to Hunter’s Gathering. I’m sure that Gera will be glad to know that this thing’s dead.”

She sets her feet back along the trail that they came on, and tries not to think about how the boar is the symbol of Ares.

* * *

 

The gates of Daytower are closed, just like Gera had told her. Even so, Aloy walks up to them.

“Hey! Open the gate!”

A guard with a fancily gilded helmet pokes his head over the battlements. “Sorry, no can do! This gate is closed.”

“Because of the giant monster, right?” Aloy asks, annoyed. She’d rigged a way to carry the boar hide at Hunter’s Gathering, but it’s still ridiculously heavy. “Well, I killed it, so there’s no need to worry about that anymore.” She won’t say anything about the other concerning things that she’s seen since leaving the Embrace – the abundance of monsters, large monsters, and different monsters. All more aggressive than normal. It makes her think back to what the centaur had told her – about things not being right in the different realms.

The guard boggles at her. “You can’t just claim that!”

“Well I just did!”

The guard stares at her. “Woman, I don’t believe you. I don’t know who you are, and there’s no way I’m opening the gate.”

Aloy resists the urge to scale this gate and show them that nothing is keeping her out. “The valley is cleared of danger. Look – I even have the monster’s pelt as a prize.”

A few more guards have stuck their heads out over the battlements and are gawking at Aloy’s pelt. It’s clearly something supernatural – the way it shines just doesn’t lend itself to normal pelts.

A new head appears, decked out with even more decorations than the others. “Swear on the sun god Apollo that the kill is yours, and I will open the gate, hunter.”

Aloy shivers. She doesn’t want to swear on a god – as a demigod, that’s the type of thing that draws attention to oneself. But Apollo is the god of oaths, and the patron of the Carja, so it only makes sense that they would ask her to swear to him.

“In the name of Apollo, I lend truth to my statement,” Aloy says carefully. “I alone slew this monster.”

The guards mutter among themselves for a second. “And there is no more danger in the valley?”

Aloy hesitates. “If there was a greater danger than this creature in the valley, then I would be very shocked.”

They chew over that for a few seconds. “Very well,” the lead guard finally says. “I will reopen the fort. Thank you for clearing the valley of its danger.”

Aloy nods her head in recognition, sighing in relief. That’s one hurdle that’s out of the way, thankfully. She doesn’t know what she would have done with herself if they’d refused to open the doors for her.

The gate slowly inches open. Aloy looks up to the main area, where merchants and guards interact with each other, and takes the other path that leads to the other side of the fort. As she steps out into the sunshine, she can almost feel the difference in the earth – this is Nora territory no longer. She’s in Carja lands now, and the earth can tell that there’s a difference.

A flake of snow falls down to rest in her hair as Aloy looks out over the rolling plains below. She can see desert, and in the far distance, built structures.

Meridian.

She stands there and takes her bearings for a few minutes. It’s beautiful, but that’s a side note to herself as she tracks the path she’s going to have to take to get to the shining city on the mesa. Thankfully, it’s big enough that she doubts that she can get properly lost, and if she sticks to the path, then she should encounter other travellers as well. That also might mean more bandit camps, but she’s already dealt with one, so she’s confident that she can deal with any more that she comes across.

The song of _west west west_ has died in her blood. She is in the west now – what she chooses to do from here on out is her choice alone.

Aloy shifts the pelt across her back so that it doesn’t impede her access to her bow, and starts walking along the trail. She isn’t going to get any closer to Meridian just by standing here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to try and have one 'quest' type event per chapter as a throw back to the fact that this is based of a video game... Also, round of applause to Aloy for killing a behemoth so early, amiright?


	5. Chapter 5

The path down into the valley is steep, and the earth shifts and moves loosely under her feet, sand instead of harder silt. It’s strange. Aloy never realised how much of her bearing and steadiness came from her contact with solid ground. Now that she’s standing on loose sand, she feels untethered, but freer, too. Like she could move far faster than normal in this terrain.

She descends down into the arid valley beyond Daytower slowly, all her senses on high alert. This really _is_ a different terrain than what she’s used to – and that means she’s might be caught off guard by monsters who live here. She’s not used to them, but they’re not used to her, either. She pays attention to the deep part of her that always warns when something preternatural is close by, and sticks in the long grass as much as she can.

She makes her way past a herd of desert kelpies, their striped pelts and loose connection with this realm meaning that she can hardly make them out against the desert. The small stream she crosses has faeries hovering and sitting on the sparse greenery, but they’re hardly a threat so she leaves them be.

Crossing that first desert plain takes up most of the day, because she is being as careful as she can be, and lugging around her gear as well as the large boar pelt is quite tiring. She doesn’t want to have to move very quickly until she makes it to Meridian and can properly unpack and sort her things out. Until then, she keeps her bow in her hand, but her head down low. No need to attract any more attention than she already has in the Nora lands. After all, she doesn’t know which parts of these Carja lands are blessed, and which she can hunt freely in without any eyes on her.

The sun is just touching the horizon by the time she makes it up the first ridge. Meridian seems to have gotten further away, but she puts that down to descending into the valley. At the top of the next ridge she can see some tents and the curl of smoke from a fire, so she heads towards it and hopes that the people there are friendly and don’t mind her sleeping with them. It’s far safer to be in a group with a fire than be by herself in the wilderness.

She approaches the camp carefully, but trepidation lines her steps as she realises that she can’t hear any voices or any movement. She steps into the ring of tents only to find it all deserted. There’s a pot of water boiling on the fire, the water spitting and the pot nearly empty. Aloy gingerly takes it off the flames so they don’t ruin the pot, and pats the sand to tamp it down into flat earth so she can put the pot down and be sure it won’t move anywhere.

There are four tents, and Aloy takes a quick peek inside all of them to make sure that the inhabitants aren’t just sleeping. All of them are empty, although only two have any signs of someone living in them. The other two are completely empty, which strikes her as strange. Why set up a tent if no one is going to sleep in it?

Standing up straight, she stretches out all her senses, searching for any glamours or any human magic in the area. The prickling of magic other than her own doesn’t make itself known, so she scratches her head, a bit confused. What is going on?

“Do you think you could take a look around for any other humans?” she asks Beaky. He hoots at her. “Just be careful, okay? I don’t know if there are any flying monsters around here, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Beaky gives her a look of disdain, as if to say that no mere monster would be enough to take him down. He takes off from where he’s been napping on her shoulder all day, and flies silently into the falling dusk.

Aloy doesn’t exactly want to set up camp in this eerily abandoned place without any context, but there’s no other camping spot nearby that she can see, and dusk is fast turning into night. She puts another few sticks on the fire and takes her pack off, only to jump as Beaky lands on her shoulder again.

“Who, who,” he hoots.

“Huh?” Aloy says, then shakes her head. “Ugh, I wish you could talk. Did you find anyone?”

“Who.”

She takes that as a yes. “Where are they?”

Beaky takes off again, flying down into the next valley that she hasn’t been into yet. Aloy sighs to herself, then grabs her bow and quiver, leaving the rest of her gear by the fire. She doesn’t need it slowing her down if there is going to be a fight.

There’s a path down into the valley, but it’s steep. Aloy is glad for the stairs carved into the rock, even as she wonders at them. They suggest that this is a route used by humans quite often, but she’s seen little foot traffic on this side of Daytower. Perhaps the other people can tell her what the camp is, and why the stairs are there.

She hears the other human before she sees him. A voice floats through the air, yelling something she can’t quite make out. The yelling is accompanied by loud and angry snorting. Aloy quickens her steps.

She rounds the final corner of the path, and emerges into a bowl shaped valley. The valley has some slight scrub, but beyond that no vegetation. In the middle of the valley, a man wearing Carja clothes is dodging around what Aloy recognises as a forest bull. What is a forest bull doing in the middle of the desert?

Now that she’s closer, she can hear what the man is yelling.

“Hey! No! Stay there! Stay there, I said!”

The bull charges, and the man only just ducks out of the way in time. The shining red of the forest bull’s pelt catches the last rays of the sun as it sinks below the horizon.

“Hey!” Aloy yells. The man doesn’t even have a bow or a spear. “What are you doing?! Get away from there before you get killed!”

She nocks and arrow into her sharpshot bow and jogs a few paces closer before aiming. The pelt of a forest bull is impenetrable to weapons that aren’t blessed, so she’s going to have to aim for somewhere uncovered if she wants to deal any damage.

“No, don’t shoot!” the man yells at her. Aloy decides that his opinion no longer counts to her, and draws her bow, aiming at the legs of the bull. She lets off an arrow and it sinks into the hock, the forest bull letting out a forlorn sound as it stops harassing the Carja man and turns to her.

“No!” the man shouts again, sprinting towards her almost as fast as the bull is moving. Aloy begins to regret getting involved in this situation, even if it does mean that she’s saved this man from his own stupidity. “You mustn’t kill it!”

“Why?” Aloy calls, another arrow already nocked.

“Please, stop!” the man yells.

“We’re both in danger,” Aloy calls back. She shoots again, and this time her arrow goes into the front leg of the bull, making it stagger. The man sprints up to her and grabs her bow, which Aloy considers to be extremely rude, and won’t let go even when she tries to pull it away from him.

“Please, kind lady, please come away with me and do not kill this creature,” the man pleads.

Aloy doesn’t exactly want to tangle with a forest bull with this guy getting in the middle of the fight, so she agrees and hurries back up the path, vaulting up the steps easily. When they get to the top, she looks back down and sees the forest bull pawing at the first step, unable to follow any further. Huh. Maybe that’s the reason the stairs are there.

The man is crouched over the fire, feeding more sticks into it.

“So, you gonna tell me what that was all about?” Aloy asks, trying not to sound too sarcastic. It doesn’t exactly work. Beaky hoots in amusement from where he’s perched on top of a nearby crag.

“Ah, you must be new around here, to not know what this camp is,” the man says.

Aloy stares at him until he continues.

“This is an outpost of the hunter’s lodge, which has its base in the great city of Meridian,” the man says. “I am the keeper of these hunting grounds.”

“Hunting grounds?” Aloy asks, sceptical.

The man nods. “You see, for some reason, that valley attracts many, many forest bulls, and some harpies as well. Always, you could enter the valley and there would be forest bulls and harpies to hunt and kill and prove yourself.” His face turns crestfallen. “But now, for some reason the harpies no longer come, and the forest bulls have all left, save that one you attempted to kill. I want to keep it alive in case it helps the others come back.”

Aloy doesn’t know if the stupidity of having a _hunting ground_ or of this man is getting to her more. “Less monsters is a good thing,” she says slowly. “After all, haven’t they been increasing in number pretty much everywhere else, and in the Carja lands in particular?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” the groundskeeper says. “But doesn’t that make it even more curious, even more strange? Why are these monsters disappearing when everywhere else they only grow more abundant, more strong?”

Aloy ponders that for a second. If these monsters are disappearing where once they were plentiful, that might have something to do with monsters appearing in areas they never had before. She wants answers to that problem, and here might be a chance to understand some of it.

“I see,” she finally says. “How about I try and track where the forest bulls have gone? If I can stay here for the night and start in the morning.”

The groundskeeper basically jumps up and down on the spot. “Oh, would you? I would be ever so grateful – and even put in a word with the hunter’s lodge in Meridian, if you so desired.”

Aloy doesn’t desire it at all, but it might be a good connection to have in Meridian. Who knows how powerful this hunter’s lodge could be. Or not be, but in that case she could probably just ignore it.

So she sets up her sleeping things in one of the spare tents, which apparently is just set up in case challengers want to stay the night after hunting all day. Aloy just appreciates that she’s going to be out of the open air, because the dryness is starting to get to her and her lips, which are already cracking. She casts a simple healing spell over herself while the groundskeeper isn’t looking and immediately feels better.

She doesn’t linger around the fire, retiring to her tent after setting up a watch schedule with the groundskeeper, even though he insists that it’s unnecessary. He then wakes her in the middle of the night, and she spends the twilit hours staring up at the stars and wondering how Elisabet would greet her when she turns up at the Earth Temple. Will she be kind? Will she scold her for leaving Nora lands? Will she be proud that Aloy made it all this way, by herself?

When the sun rises, she wakes the groundskeeper, tells him she’s leaving her things here and that if he values his life he won’t touch them, and takes the path down into the bowl valley, keeping her steps light. When she gets to the last turn, she looks out and sees that the forest bull that she injured last night is still there, her arrows still in its legs. She winces a little bit, but decides not to kill it just yet – it might have a clue for her later. So instead she skirts the edge of the valley, towards the other opening where the forest bulls must come in.

Sure enough, the ground there has lots of hoof marks that she can see easily with her bare eyes. She crouches down and touches the earth, breathes out all the air in her lungs. She buries her fingers into the loam and roots her magic deep into the soil, and turns the magic of the earth towards her will, shaping it into a powerful tracking spell.

When she opens her eyes, the hoof prints are outlined in ghostly purple, and she can trot along at her own pace and follow them. From what she can tell, they aren’t new tracks, but that doesn’t deter her or her magic. The tracking spell keeps the prints looking as fresh as the day they were made.

She leaves the bowl valley, and takes a lesser worn track that leads further south than west, and keeps going at a steady pace that she knows she can keep up. The path winds and bends, but as the hours pass, definitely heads due south.

The monsters along the way grow larger and more aware as well. Aloy kills two lesser trolls, some darklings, a sphinx and a pack of harpies within the first hour, and it just gets worse from there, until she half feels like she’s swimming in monsters. As soon as she kills one, another appears just down the path.

She downs a swarm of pixies just as the path turns sharply left, heading into a ravine in the mountainside. Aloy doesn’t like where this is going, but she follows the tracks anyway, which have never deviated from this path. A few goblins skitter out of a nearby patch of long grass, and Aloy sets it ablaze in an attempt to drive any that are in hiding out. Another half dozen join the ones attacking her, and by the time she kills them all, she’s nearly out of arrows. She salvages the ones she can, and walks into the deep shadows of the mountain ravine.

The red grass she favours grows thickly out of the harsh glare of the sun, and Aloy sinks into it comfortably. The familiar motions of moving silently and undetected through the grass calm her, and allow her to see further ahead than what she’d been observing before.

This valley is extremely short – she can already see where the walls curve into each other to form the head of the valley. And at the furthest point, a seething pool of darkness bubbles.

Aloy stops dead. Something about that bubbling blackness is _wrong_ and _bad_ and _shouldn’t exist_ – she has no idea what it is, but the urge to destroy it is suddenly overwhelming. She digs her fingers into the earth to try and ground her, but that just makes the feeling worse, because now she can feel the effect that the pool is having on the ground. It extends far past what she can feel, deep down towards the core of the earth, poisoning the healthy loam.

As she watches, a particularly large bubble forms, and then continues to form – the round bubble turning into a strange shape, turning into something with short arms and legs. The black sludge pops, and a goblin steps out, shaking its head and sending droplets of black flying. Aloy bites her tongue when she feels the poison in those drops hits the ground.

The abundance of monsters suddenly makes sense, but makes no sense at the same time – she’d never heard of anything like this. Was this where monsters came from? Is this how they make it to this realm, crawling through a sick hole from their own?

Her bow is in her hand and an arrow is shot before she can even really think about it. The goblin disintegrates, slower than normal. She stares at it until the dust it is made of blows away in the gritty breeze.

For the moment, there are no other monsters around. Aloy breaks out of the grass and jogs towards the black pool, her instincts telling her to get closer while her more human part tells her to get away. As she gets closer she can see the black pool even clearer – it’s stench sears her nose, and she yanks her shirt up to breathe through it, even though that doesn’t really help.

Another big bubble starts to form, and Aloy pokes it with an arrow. The bubble bends, and only pops when she nocks the arrow and shoots it.

Standing here, there’s a deep urge to do something about this – whatever it is, she knows that it shouldn’t be here. It doesn’t belong in this valley, spreading its poison to the green, healthy grass. It doesn’t belong here, scattering monsters to places they don’t belong.

Aloy drops her bow and digs both her hands into the ground, searching for _something,_ a hint, a clue, of how to stop this. Closer, she can sense deeper, and there’s a particular point that feels… off, in a different way to the rest of this sticky blackness.

“Mother, help me,” Aloy mutters, not sure if it’s a prayer or not. The only thing she’s sure of right now is that she can’t stop this thing by herself.

Slowly, her palms start to heat where they’re buried in the ground. Aloy breathes and doesn’t fight as the ground starts to swallow her hands, then her wrists and then up to her elbows. Aloy rests her forehead against the soil and sends her awareness deep into the earth, and deep into herself.

The earth magic from her parentage is something that Aloy doesn’t often utilise. Rost has always told her to avoid using it if she can – it’s a dead giveaway of who she is, and who her parent is. But here and now, with no eyes on her and a threat in front of her, she leans into that ancient magic and feels the rocks and earth around her stir and answer her call.

Lithe green magic emerges from the ground to curl around her, and Aloy breathes it in, feels it, and breathes it out, sends it out through her palms. The healing green meets the poisonous sticky goop and the two substances struggle, but Aloy is here to provide human guidance and a continuous power source, and the green slowly starts to overtake the poison.

She breathes and casts the spell and sweats and _pulls_ at the magic deep inside the earth, deep inside her, and cuts off the poison at its source. The green magic leaves her all of a sudden, and Aloy is left panting and drenched with sweat, her arms stuck elbow deep in the ground. She grunts as she yanks her arms out, and looks at the bubbling pool.

It’s still there, but it’s far smaller, and much shallower. Aloy can’t bring herself to move as a bubble slowly forms, but when it pops, a forest bull is standing by the side of the pool.

“Huh,” Aloy says thoughtfully. The forest bull paws at the ground for a second, and then starts walking out of the valley. Aloy watches it go, trying to come up with an explanation.

She manages to sit up, and puts her hands on the ground again, trying to see if the poison is all gone.

The… pool is still there, but it feels… natural. Aloy looks at it. Now the pool lies still and flat, with no hint of any bubbles, quieter and calmer, not that frenzied bubbling from before.

“Well, I have literally no idea what just happened, but I think I fixed _a_ problem,” she says, thinking about the groundskeeper. If this is what the pool normally looks like, spitting up forest bulls every now and then, it’s probably why the bowl valley has lots of forest bulls around. “Now if only I knew what in the realm this means.”

She stands up, manages not to fall over, and starts the trek out of the valley. By the time she reaches the desert plains, the sun is dangerously close to the horizon and she’s too far away to make it back to the camp tonight. She doesn’t want to stay near the pool though, so she starts on the trail back to the hunting grounds, wanting to cover some distance before she collapses in a patch of grass.

Movement from above draws her attention, but it’s only Beaky swooping down to glide over her head. He doesn’t land on her, instead turning in a lazy arc and flying back the way he came, as if to encourage her to keep going.

She follows Beaky for longer than she should – but the owl warns her of any monsters on the path, and she sneaks around them, not feeling up to a fight. And when the moon rises, Aloy feels the implied protection at her back. The earth goddess has always had a strange relationship with the moon – but even standing alone, Artemis is the protector of women, and those who hunt. Aloy touches her bow and says a prayer of thanks to the moon goddess. It’s always good practise to be thankful for things, and not take them for granted.

The leftover magic from her spell grants her the energy to keep going when she would have collapsed otherwise. When she comes to the bowl valley, there’s a single forest bull grazing on the scant scrub. Aloy skirts around it and feels her limbs turn to lead as she climbs the stairs up to the camp at the top of the spur.

The campfire is ashes and coals, and Aloy walks past it to her tent. She barely gets the flap open and closed before she collapses on her bed, facedown and fully dressed. She groans and pulls the bows off her back, but doesn’t bother with the quiver before going straight to sleep.

* * *

 

The sun is high enough in the sky to shine a light into her tent when Aloy wakes up, already uncomfortably hot. She sighs deeply, but the deep exhaustion from yesterday has lifted, and now she just feels tired.

She crawls out of the tent and nearly gives the groundskeeper a heart attack.

“Nora!” he exclaims. “When did you get here?”

“Last night,” Aloy tells him, ignoring his request for more information in favour of digging into her pack and tearing into a piece of jerky. “You have any hot water for tea?” she asks through a mouthful of meat.

The groundskeeper sighs, but he grabs the pot and disappears out of the camp. Aloy finishes a few pieces of jerky and then digs her tea leaves out to share with the groundskeeper after he boils the water. When she’s done, she grabs her gear and her pack, and stands.

“I probably fixed your problem,” Aloy tells him. “You should find some forest bulls down in the valley soon enough.”

The groundskeeper brightens considerably. “Really? You did? Oh, lovely Nora, please tell me your name so I can pass it on to the hunter’s lodge!”

Aloy sighs. “It’s Aloy,” she says. “Thanks for the tent, and everything.”

“No, no, thank you!” the groundskeeper says.

“Which way is the best way towards Meridian from here?” Aloy asks.

He points towards the path. “Just follow the path west. Meridian is the centre of all paths.”

“Right. Helpful,” Aloy mutters. “Beaky!” she yells. “We’re going!”

There’s an extremely disgruntled hoot, and Beaky flies down from the top of a nearby crag to perch on her shoulder. Aloy adjusts her bow so she can grab it easily, and sets off towards the path.

Hopefully, she would get to Meridian soon. And she _would_ get some answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> long time no update akjshdhka geez I'm sorry. Hopefully there will be more of this fic soon though!! I'm impatient to get to Meridian but also I just like writing detours and worldbuilding so uhh we'll see how that goes lmao.
> 
> Also!! atotalthrowawayaccount has written fic based off this fic and I just... could not be more thankful like it's so good so [check it out!!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16010768/chapters/37360490)
> 
> AND!!! I set up a HZD secret santa exchange, if you write fic or make art [you should sign up!!!!](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/HZD_Secret_Santa_2018/profile) Sign ups close 20 Oct so get in there :D


	6. Chapter 6

Aloy is just losing hope that she’ll come across any type of settlement and will have to face the night by herself when she rounds a cliff and spots a few flickering lights around a cluster of buildings halfway down the next valley. Relieved that she won’t be stuck defending herself out in the dark through a sleepless night, she quickens her steps. Even the most heartless outpost will usually let a traveller rest within the fences of their land. That much protection is usually enough to keep most creatures out, and is still safe for the family within the warded house.

“Go ahead and see if there’s anything suspicious looking, will you?” Aloy asks Beaky. He hoots at her and takes off, immediately blending into the deepening shadows of night. Aloy adjusts her pack and picks up her pace. She wouldn’t answer the door to anything after the sun sets, and she doubts these people will either.

As she walks, she tests out the ground under her feet. There’s something that’s been itching at the back of her mind uneasily for the last few hours, but it’s nothing that she can pin down and it’s starting to annoy her. Demigod instincts are supposed to be useful, not frustrating! Too bad her impending sense of doom hasn’t gotten that message. It scratches at the back of her mind a constant _be careful be watchful be on your guard._ Her muscles are sore from where they’ve been tense for most of the day because of it.

There are corrals of pigs and cows and some horses around the houses and the one stable. Suspecting that several families live in the different dwellings, Aloy approaches the one closest to the road and politely knocks on the door, even though the animals are making enough noise that the inhabitants should know that she’s there.

“Go away!” a voice from inside says immediately. It’s gruff and older.

“I’m seeking shelter from the night,” Aloy says.

“Go somewhere else, we have no shelter here,” the voice says.

“Thank you for your time,” Aloy replies, even though she’s not feeling very grateful. She turns back down towards the main road and trots down to join it again. It’s sunset, and she doesn’t want to provoke more hostility than is already there. As she passes the pens of animals she reaches out to them with a touch of calm, and most of them quiet their noises.

The next house is better than the first – a woman is already standing in the doorway as Aloy comes up their road. Aloy nods to her and the woman gazes back, steely. There’s movement behind her and an older man comes into view, steel grey hair and fierce eyes.

“I am seeking shelter from the night,” Aloy says again. The woman’s eyes flick up to the darkening sky. The man scowls.

“I would offer shelter but there is sickness here, in the animals and people,” the woman says, voice soft. “Please, for your own benefit, leave.”

“Sickness? Of what nature?”

“You don’t want to know,” the older man says, mouth tight.

The woman shakes her head. “Sores and bleeding for no reason we know of. Please, leave us.”

 “I have healing knowledge,” Aloy tells her. “Let me look at them and see if there’s anything I can do in exchange for a roof over my head tonight.”

The woman hesitates for a few seconds. She looks at the man, who fixes his gaze on Aloy. “We’ve had more than one Banuk raid around these parts. But I know how to pick a Nora. We don’t like strangers.”

“I come with no one but myself,” Aloy promises.

“Please father, let her look at Yulin,” the woman asks. The older man huffs, but turns from the door, clearly dismissing both of them to their own devices.

The woman seems to take that as permission, and steps down from the doorway. “We’ve kept the sick separate from the healthy, but my brother was struck down yesterday. I fear there’s not much time for them left. My name is Nialah. If there’s anything you can do to help us, I would be in your debt.”

Nialah leads her towards the stables. Aloy hears the mutters inside before she sees anything living – low murmurs of discontent and discomfort and the sounds of animals snuffling in pain. There’s something else, as well – the unsettling feeling that has been growing in her chest all afternoon swells into certainty that this is no normal sickness. These people stand no chance without her.

On one side of the barn animals lie on their sides, unmoving except for rasping breathes. Aloy winces at the black sores that litter their hides. On the other side is a man in clean straw. He’s covered in sweat and is unconscious, eyes flicking underneath his eyelids quickly.

“My brother, Yulin,” Nialah says softly.

“Who was first infected?” Aloy asks. If they found something they shouldn’t have disturbed, maybe tracking it back to the source would allow her to set something right.

“My sister-in-law’s mare, Kora,” Nialah says. “She’s stubborn and is still alive, even though the illness has taken more animals than her. She’s always had a fiery spirit.”

“Your sister-in-law?” Aloy asks as Nialah leads her to the last stall in the barn. Inside the stall, a black and white paint is lying on her side. An unusual pattern. The mare’s gasps for breath fill the space, louder and with more energy than the animals she had passed. This horse hasn’t given up yet.

“Yulin’s wife, Garah. She… is over at the next town, trading. She has been away since before the illness started.”

“I see,” Aloy says. She hops over the side of the stall and puts a hand on Kora’s side. Her skin is hot and sweaty under her palm.

“Be careful!” Nialah says. “She has a truly hideous temper – only Garah could ride her.”

Aloy has never had any trouble with animals before, and the mare is truly sick. Even if she had wanted to do her harm, Aloy doubts she could have. The horse’s hide is trembles where she touches it, but when Aloy closes her eyes and concentrates her energy, she can see the sickness inside her. She gently begins to work at it as best she can – if Kora is the worst effected, then she needs Aloy’s help first.

“Did your sister take another horse to the next village, instead of her own?” Aloy asks. It could be an innocent question. But the sickness here is not of mundane origin. There’s a reason for its presence.  

“Oh, um… yes. Our wagon horse, to pull the wagon.”

Plausible, if only this farm had been a little bigger.

“Do you know if any of your neighbour’s animals have fallen sick?”

Nialah wrings her hands. “I have not talked to them.”

Aloy’s sense of wrongness had led her to this farm. She doubts that the sickness had spread anywhere else – yet.

The mare takes a pain free breath under her hands, and Aloy finally finds the root of the problem. It trails off to something else, a creature that is fuelling the illness. Whatever has inflicted this plague on the farm, it is deliberate and full of malice.

“Did anything change for Kora before she fell ill? Did she go somewhere new?”

“She was pastured on the back field,” Nialah says.

“Can you show me?”

“But the night…”

“Quickly.”

Nialah nods after a second, and Aloy reluctantly leaves Kora. The mare should be in less pain now, and the only way to truly heal her would be to stop the thing that had infected her in the first place.

The back field is full of scraggly bushes and trees. It’s not the desert that she had crossed to make it to this place, but it’s hardly a place of plenty either.

“I’ll look around,” Aloy tells Nialah. “Go and tend to the sick.”

Nialah hardly needs prompting to flee. As soon as she leaves, Beaky swoops down from the sky to sit on Aloy’s shoulder, his claws digging in more than normal.

“You find something?” Aloy asks reluctantly. She doesn’t really want to find the thing that started this – if it’s what she’s beginning to suspect, then she wants nothing to do with this at all. But no one besides a demigod can deal with the particular type of monster she’s tracking, and she doubts that there are any others in the vicinity to deal with the plague before it gets out of hand and starts to infect the nearby farms and people.

Beaky hoots and takes off again. Aloy checks her weapons as she follows him, skirting around bushes and holes in the rocky earth as best she can. The ground here is unsettling – she doesn’t know if she wants to touch it or not, and since she’s normally so steady on her feet it’s putting her on edge.

Beaky lands on a medium sized boulder and ruffles his feathers, unusually silent. Aloy stretches out with all her senses, trying to tell if there’s anything in the area. The only thing that she picks up on is a concentration of the wrongness, buried in the earth.

“Oh, I don’t like this,” Aloy mutters to herself.  She reaches down to touch the earth, and asks it to uncover what it is hiding.

The ground rumbles, and Aloy waits until she’s sure it’s a body before asking the earth to take it deep once more. Aloy touches her hands together in a symbol of prayer and closes her eyes.

_Mother, please take this one into your arms. Her time was cut unjustly short, but I will see that justice is found. Mother, please take this one into your heart. She deserves the peace that she did not find on your earth._

Aloy opens her eyes and steps back, eyes roaming the area for clues. A woman, killed in her own fields, likely by one of her own kin. If that’s not a recipe for disaster, then Aloy doesn’t know what is.

There’s a reason that demigods are allowed to roam free by the gods, and it’s not just because they are the god’s children. Humans belong to _this_ world, and no other. They can live and fight and die here and their spirits would hardly ever be tainted by it, because it was where they belonged.

That doesn’t mean that _other_ things would stay away.

Aloy is caught between worlds, pulled by her two parents just like all demigods. But that means she can see things that don’t belong, and it also means she has the power to banish them.

“But why?” Aloy mutters to herself. The farm here was small, and if Garah had been living here with her husband there shouldn’t have been any reason to kill her.

Beaky chatters from his perch and takes off. Aloy follows him as he leads her over the crest of a hill, where she finds her answer.

There had obviously been a fire, and a fight – Nialah’s father had said that Banuk raids were not uncommon. Aloy knows enough of the Banuk people to know that they have long memories and that their weraks are the most important things to them. The Carja had been raiding them for years in the Red Raids, and that is not something that those icy people would forget, even with a new king. Raids in return would be something they thought of as due recompense.

But Banuk raiders also have no interest in taking land, or kidnapping people like the Carja raids had. Although, if they had found a woman, by herself…

Aloy grimaces. “They obviously hate the Banuk. And Garah was young enough, that… Well. If she was with child, then that explains why – but who killed her?”

It would have had to been the husband. He was sick, and if he had killed his wife in cold blood that would have created the type of imbalance that would attract a Nosoi; a plague spirit.

“I’m not certain, but I’m certain enough,” Aloy says grimly. “Now we have to go and ask Nialah some questions to see if she knew.”

The walk back to the barn is tense – Aloy can feel the earth waiting for her to fulfil her promise of putting things right. At least her words seem to have the malevolent feeling on the other foot, unsure of what her next actions will be. If she wants to keep the plague spirit uncertain, she’s going to have to move fast. It probably has recognised her as a demigod, but not which one. Otherwise, it likely would have already made its move.

Nialah is in the stable, washing a clean cloth over her brother’s skin to try and take some of the sweat off. Aloy enters silently and watches her for a minute to try and see if she knows or not.

“There were some interesting things in your far paddock,” Aloy says. Nialah flinches from the voice.

“Oh, I didn’t see you… what did you find?”

The voice is just nervous enough for Aloy to be sure. Distaste curdles in her gut.

“There was a fight on the other side of that hill,” she says, as calmly as she can manage. “Do you know who was there?”

“One of the raiding parties,” Nialah says, a hint of dislike finally colouring her expression. “They raid us and the Sun-King takes no measures against them – we are just farmers! We had nothing to do with the Red Raids.”

“I’m sure the people the Carja raided would say the same,” Aloy says coldly. Nialah stands, emotion flaring in her eyes.

“I knew you were nothing but another stranger, here to disrupt us even further from the peace. You should leave.”

“If I do, the plague will not stop here,” Aloy says. “You know what it is, don’t you?”

Nialah hesitates, curling back in on herself to become timid once more. “I… I don’t know…”

“Did you know about Garah?” Aloy makes herself ask.

“She’s at the other village, I already told you!” Nialah says, but she doesn’t sound like she believes herself, let alone has enough conviction to change someone else’s mind.

“If so,” Aloy says, ice in her veins, “Then whose body did I find in your paddock?”

Nialah reels back, shock written all over her face. “No – you didn’t! You didn’t find anyone, you liar!”

“You only suspected,” Aloy says to herself. “Even so, you should have done something, _told_ someone!”

“My, my brother, he–”

“He was the one who did it, didn’t he? That’s why he’s the first human to be sick. And your sister’s mare – she was there, wasn’t she? Garah was trying to leave, and your brother stopped her.” Aloy stormed towards the back of the barn, where Garah’s mare was still lying on her side. Aloy places her hands on the mare once more, and wills healing energy into her. Kora snorts and kicks her legs out.

“I’m here to help,” Aloy says lowly. “I know what happened to Garah. I’m here to try and set things right.” The horse’s eye swivels back to look at her, and Aloy presses more healing energy into her. Slowly, Kora relaxes.

“What are you going to do?”

Aloy looks up at Nialah, who is nervously wringing her hands. “There is a spirit causing this illness,” she says bluntly. “It is not natural.”

Nialah bites her lip. “I… I don’t know…”

Aloy resists the urge to stand up and smack some sense into her. “How many others live here? Would they have known about the murder?”

“It’s not murder!” Nialah says. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Looked like murder to me,” Aloy says tightly. Well, she hadn’t seen, exactly – but she knew what the earth had said.

Nialah slowly deflates. “Myself, my brother, my… father, and Yulin’s two siblings and their children live here. If anyone had known… it would have been my father.”

Aloy thinks of the bad tempered man who had not wanted any interference on his ranch, and agrees with her.

“The Nosoi claims and guards its victims jealously,” Aloy tells Nialah. She’s already taut and waiting for a fight, because the spirit isn’t going to give her much warning. “If I keep healing this mare, then it will come to me, sooner rather than later. But that won’t help much if justice hasn’t been served. It is unlikely that your brother will live.”

“You’re a demigod,” Nialah says, staring at the soft green glow around Aloy’s hands. Her eyes move to the bows on her back. “Healing… and archery. You must be a daughter of Apollo.”

Aloy says nothing to confirm or deny the guess. If Nialah wants to make her own assumptions then there’s nothing that Aloy can do to change her mind without making things even more suspicious.

“Go and ask some questions – see if anyone else was complicit,” Aloy instructs her. “Helping to get justice might protect you from the curse.”

Nialah squeaks. “But this is my family, I can’t –”

“You can,” Aloy interrupts her. “And you will. Or the options I have for dealing with this situation narrow drastically.”

Nialah swallows nervously, nods, and flees the barn. Aloy weighs up the odds of her actually obeying or telling the others everything and all of them coming out here with the intent to kill her.

“Only time will tell,” she muses. She strokes Kora’s side, seeing the blisters and wounds ever so slowly closing under her care. She’s never tried to heal something this serious before, but that doesn’t mean she’s incapable of it. Just that she’ll probably be very tired tomorrow. “A foul temper, huh? I bet you just sensed something _off_ about these people. That they were willing to kill, and to do nothing to the killers. Don’t worry. I have you now.”

Kora relaxes under her ministrations. Nialah doesn’t come back, so Aloy finds a bucket and gives the mare some water and feed, and moves on to some of the other animals. She doesn’t touch the man still wracked with fever by the entrance.

With the sun well and truly set by now, Aloy does not want to risk any other excursions away from the barn, even if only to the farmhouse. She digs her own supplies out and feeds herself, and then goes back to sit by Kora and keep a watch on her. The Nosoi are greedy creatures who fight for their victims. If Kora was one of the first and has yet to succumb, Aloy healing her will likely enrage the spirit. Or so Rost had told her.

“Dealing with these things is a lot scarier when I’m alone,” she whispers to the air. “Rost, where are you? It’s all so much easier when you’re by my side.”

But he isn’t by her side, and she is very alone here. Almost in response to her thoughts, she hears the soft whisper of wings as Beaky comes in through one of the windows of the barn, and flies down to perch next to her.

“Anything I need to know about?”

Beaky hoots softly and starts preening his tail, so Aloy takes that as a _no_. Which only sets her more on edge – where is the spirit?

She naps in short bursts throughout the night, waking at every hint of a sound that might indicate that something was moving where it isn’t supposed to be. Beaky sits above her and she knows that all of his senses are watching as well.

Sometimes she wonders about him – Beaky ceased to be a ‘normal’ owl by the strict definition years ago. Was it just her influence, of being near him and talking to him? Or has he been blessed by her mother, to watch over her? Either way, his intelligence is a bit too much for just a normal bird.

In between her naps, she works on healing Kora. The mare is much better than she was when Aloy first started working on her, but the only thing that will restore her energy is time. Aloy can pour all the healing energy into her that she wants, but some things can only be healed with rest and good food. She gets Kora more feed and water and takes care of all the other animals as well, because Nialah hasn’t come back. Aloy can only hope that’s because it’s dark outside, and because she knows about the Nosoi now.

When she wakes up from another nap, dawn is beginning to creep into the barn, its light burning away the immediate threat of a spirit attack. The sun has strong energy, and all spirits are by definition not of this realm – they can’t stand the constant heat of the sun unless they are extremely powerful, and Aloy does not think this spirit qualifies, or all the people in the farmhouse would be dead. She has until nightfall to work out a solution to this problem.

Kora is standing now, and Aloy gives her an affectionate pat. She can see evidence of the illness but there are no more plague-sores on the mare. She quickly checks over all the other animals, all of which have been improving under her care. That should be driving the Nosoi mad with jealousy and rage.

When she checks on the man, he has obviously taken a turn for the worse. There are sores that she can see, and probably lots that she can’t. He’s still unconscious.

Aloy eats her breakfast and thinks over her options. Just as she’s close to making a decision, she hears voices coming from the main house.

“… a stranger. You know we can’t trust her. She didn’t even give her name!”

“She’s a Nora, dad. You know they don’t give out names lightly.”

“She’s taking care of the animals and Yulin,” Nialah says, voice trembling. Aloy is beginning to suspect that she just lives in a state of perpetual fear.

“We’ll see,” the first voice says. Aloy thinks that it must be the older man she saw yesterday.

She stands, dusts herself off and checks that all her gear is in place before taking a step outside the barn, clearly standing in the full light of the sun.

There are three people coming towards her – Nialah, the older man, and a younger man that resembles both of them. He must be one of Nialah’s siblings.

“Healer,” the younger man says, inclining his head. “I thank you for your services. My name is Fara.”

Aloy looks between him, Nialah and their father, and almost feels like she’s about to break out into a sweat. Two of them know what Yulin had done. Fara did not, but trusts his siblings… oh this was going to get sticky.

Aloy nods back choppily. “There is a plague-spirit on your lands. One called by a most grievous act.”

“So Nialah has implied,” Fara says gravely. “And yet, what could this grievous act be?”

Aloy sighs and cuts to the heart of the manner. “Garah’s murder, by her own husband’s hands while she was with child, on her own lands in cold blood. That is enough to attract a plague-spirit.”

The old man’s face grows stormy while Fara splutters. Nialah does not say anything at all, but seems to draw in on herself. “You have no proof!” Fara says. “And yet you come here with your accusations?”

“I have seen Garah’s body and your father himself has told me of the raiding parties that have come to your lands. The plague-spirit is here, and has only struck down one human. What other proof do you need?”

Fara paled.

“You bring dissent into my lands,” their father says. “Your welcome here is spent. Leave, now.”

Aloy shivers as she feels the protections of hospitality wash away from her. A full human probably wouldn’t have noticed them leave, but Aloy sees that this man understands the finality of what he had just done.

“Banishing me will not banish the spirit,” Aloy warns. “Be wary.” She turns and leaves, glad that she had already been ready to go. She doesn’t think that he would have allowed her time to collect her things.

This makes things more complicated, but easier too. Now she no longer has to deal with the people who call this place home – she can go straight for the Nosoi. She leaves the farmland and carefully circles around until she’s on the high ground of the area, where she can make arrows and wait until sundown.

Beaky lands in a nearby shrub and squawks his dislike of being woken up. Aloy can only shrug at him.

Unlike her normal arrows, the ones she makes now she spends time over, murmuring prayers. Each arrow glows slightly when she puts it aside. Blessings for fights only work when you know what it is you’re going to be fighting, and take time to do. But she has the time and she wants every edge she can get on the Nosoi. Those things don’t play nice, and she doesn’t want to get into a close combat fight with something that can inflict plague just by being in the vicinity.

The wait is almost worse than the fight will be. She huffs at herself. Wait until the fight is ongoing – then she’ll think the wait was paradise. But until then she meditates, makes arrows and keeps a close eye on the farmhouse down below her.

There’s activity going on, certainly. Several people have moved between the barn and the house, and more had left in the direction away from Aloy, towards the far off field where she had found Garah’s body. She only hopes that they don’t disturb it, not after she’s already given her blessings to it and promised the site that she would put things right. That was enough to risk another spirit down on their heads, and Aloy doesn’t even want to deal with the one she has on her hands right now.

As the sun’s shadows fade, Aloy puts all her blessed arrows into her quiver, hefts her bow with the fastest draw, and heads back down to the barn. That’s where all the victims are – that’s where the Nosoi will show up. It will want to claim the ones that she had healed, and has had the whole night and day to feel its weakening grip on them as she healed.

Nialah is in the barn when she shows up, sitting beside the man who started all this.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, face pale in the golden light of the setting sun. “If father sees you –”

 “He won’t,” Aloy says. He hadn’t come until the full light of the rising sun had lit the area – he was scared of the spirit. The walls of his home and hearth would protect him during the night, but he had sent Nialah out here, alone. If Aloy hadn’t been here, she would have been claimed as a victim alongside Yulin.

“The spirit will likely come tonight,” Aloy tells her tersely. “You should leave.”

Nialah is already deathly white, but even so Aloy thinks she pales further. “I… am to wait out here. And attend to Yulin.”

Aloy bites back a curse. So Nialah is also being given as a sacrifice, while the rest of the humans cower inside and hope that there is enough life in here to appease the Nosoi.

“Fine,” she says. “Then stay out of my way.”

Nialah huddles pathetically back by Yulin’s side. Aloy can already see the sweat on her brow, more than the cool night warrants. Her fever has already started, then.

She checks on the other animals, Kora last of all. The mare seems to be in good spirits, and looks far livelier than she had yesterday. Aloy gives her a complete check-up, and is satisfied by what she finds. All traces of the spirit are gone from Kora’s internal energy. The mare is as healthy as she can be, given the circumstances. She’s standing up, and she nuzzles Aloy’s shoulder. Aloy digs through her pouch until she finds a small apple, and twists it apart to give half to the mare. Kora lips at it eagerly, and Aloy can’t help but smile.

“You don’t belong here with them,” Aloy murmurs to her. Kora whinnies at her softly, and Aloy pats her neck to calm them both down. 

The only warning she gets is Nialah’s choked off gasp, and with her spear in her hand Aloy spins on the spot and barely deflects the lunge from the spirit. It yowls at being thwarted and sprints away, leaving half imprinted footsteps on the ground that slowly disappear as its impression on the world fades. Aloy dashes out of the barn after it, teeth gritted as it scampers away.

“I’m here!” she yells at it, a challenge. She’s the one who has come and interrupted it in its feeding. She’s the one it will go after if she makes herself a target.

The Nosoi makes a chittering, unsettled sound and burrows under the earth, leaving no visual trace of its passage. Aloy crouches, puts a hand to the ground, and _stabs._

“ _Eeehuurk!”_ it screams. Aloy bounces back a few steps to give herself some room and grabs her bow, aiming at it. “ _No no no no bad! No fair!”_

“This place is not yours,” Aloy says stridently. “I command you to leave it!”

“ _Mine mine, all mine, no young earth to keep me away MINE!”_

Aloy shoots another few arrows, and it howls with each one that lands. She leaps out of its way – she doesn’t want it to touch her, and those claws are dripping with ooze and disease. Aloy rolls away as it charges at her again, and it uses the opportunity to dart past her back towards the barn.

“Get back here!”

Beaky swoops down, screaming shrilly at the Nosoi, but it barely takes note of the owl. Instead it dodges around and goes straight for Nialah, who is cowering against the wall of the barn.

Aloy shoots it and it shrieks and dodges away from the defenceless woman. It’s hard to pin down – it’s fast and agile and blends into the background so she has to squint to see it. Beaky keeps diving at it, and she prays that she won’t hit him by accident.

After another few arrows it burrows under the ground again, and Aloy swears under her breath as she darts forward to chase it. The plague spirit leads her on a chase around the barn and then back to the front and towards the house. Aloy catches up to it in the front yard.

“ _No protection here!”_ it screams, and Aloy ducks into a roll as it launches out of the earth towards her. The spiritual barriers she’d gained while protecting Nialah have fallen – the owner of this land had cast her out. She’s not welcome here, but neither is the Nosoi. She grits her teeth and scrapes her next arrow against her arm bracer, lighting the tip on fire.

“You don’t have any either!” she snarls in response. When the Nosoi tries to leap at her she twirls on the spot and launches the fire arrow straight at it. The spirit dodges under the first one, but the second arrow goes directly into its heart. The spirit screams, a ghastly, unearthly sound that rends at Aloy’s ears. She staggers under the onslaught, but when it ends the Nosoi is gone. She carefully steps forward and toes at the earth where it had been – the dust of its remnants are already fading. There’s a scrap of fur left behind as a trophy, and Aloy gingerly picks it up and tucks it away inside a scrap of cloth where it can’t touch anything else. She doesn’t want to take it, but leaving it behind is probably not a good idea either.

A light has started to fill the area. Aloy regards the currently on fire farmhouse, and reasons that it’s probably a good start for recompense.

“You!”

Aloy looks to see the front door of the farmhouse open, the older man standing there. Aloy crosses her arms, unimpressed. Beaky swoops down to land on her shoulder, and that seems to unnerve him even more.

“I told you that you were not welcome!”

“And I told you that the spirit needed to be banished. It was drawing strength from this location, because you had done nothing to confront the problem.”

Fara elbows out past his father, shooting him a look filled with anger. “Thank you, healer, for freeing us from the spirit.”

“Don’t thank me just yet,” Aloy warns. “I just killed that one. Without the murder being set right, another will come.”

Both men pale. Aloy regards them both coolly, their burning home behind them setting her in stark contrast.

“You – you witch!”

“Your home is being cleansed by fire, and I suspect your son has died with the Nosoi,” Aloy states. “If you admit your guilt, then I think that should be enough for your daughter’s memory to rest in peace.”

The man’s mouth moves wordlessly. “Fine!” he spits. “I knew about it, and I didn’t do anything about it. Is that enough for you?”

“Father!” Gara cries.

“It sounds like it’s enough for your family,” Aloy says, nodding to the people who had come out the other side of the house and are watching it burn. In the middle of the desert, the one well in the front courtyard is probably their only source of water, and that method is far too slow to try and douse the flames. She lifts her voice. “You heard his admission, by his own volition and from his own lips. Do with it as you will.”

And angry muttering starts up from the small crowd, and Aloy slowly fades into the background. She trots back towards the barn as shouting erupts behind her, voices and opinions and accusations flying.

Nialah is sitting beside her brother in the barn. Aloy doesn’t have to look at him too closely to see that he isn’t breathing anymore.

“You should burn his body,” Aloy advises. She puts a hand on Nialah’s forehead and sends some of her remaining energy into removing the knot of sickness inside of her. Just because Nialah didn’t stand up to her father doesn’t mean she has to die for it. Aloy quickly moves around the stable to make sure none of the animals have the seed of illness in them any more, and then finds a halter, horse blanket and saddlebags in the store room. Kora seems unsurprised when she throws the blanket over her and attaches the saddlebags to it. Just as she’s doing up the last buckle of the halter, Nialah seems to realise what she’s doing.

“What are you doing?” she asks, hand coming up to cover her mouth.

“I think that seems obvious,” Aloy says wryly. “You father banished any protection from me, so I’m not breaking any wards with technical horse theft. And Kora doesn’t want to stay here, anyway. She never liked any of you.”

Nialah boggles at her. Aloy fills the saddlebags with horse feed and snags a lead rope from the entry to the stable, tucking that into her pack. She won’t need it because animals can understand her, but it’ll be useful if she encounters any other humans on the road and she wants to blend in.

“Try standing up for yourself in the future,” Aloy advises. “You’ll regret less things that way.” She starts off down the road and Kora follows behind her, the sound of her hooves already soothing. Beaky flies by overhead, and she turns in the direction he indicates.

She leaves the cleansed ground behind her, with the humans who dirtied it arguing as their homestead slowly collapses inwards, the fire leaving nothing behind.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Smallest Beginnings](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16010768) by [atotalthrowawayaccount](https://archiveofourown.org/users/atotalthrowawayaccount/pseuds/atotalthrowawayaccount)




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